


these starlight hours

by PocketUniverse (SublimeDiscordance)



Series: A Study in Six [3]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mass Effect Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Father/Son Incest, Fluff, Implied Mshenko, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mentioned Mshenko, Mild Gore, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, Pacific Rim Birthday Bash 2017, Polyamory, Post-Mass Effect 3, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-01 10:58:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11484951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SublimeDiscordance/pseuds/PocketUniverse
Summary: A dull throbbing starts up behind Herc’s left eye.“Black ops as in plausible deniability, or—”“Black ops as in Chuck and AIDNN untangled a trojan from the file that they’re pretty sure would’ve fused our drive core unless you were the one to open it.”God damn, but Herchatesblack ops.Or, the OT6 Mass Effect AU no one asked for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started as [something silly](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2108286/chapters/10734689) and has evolved outward from there. 
> 
> I'd like to ~~blame~~ thank suyari, ArcMailer, and EurekaArcher for sticking by me through all my crazy rambling and ranting about this story.
> 
> So. A comprehensive understanding of the Mass Effect series is certainly not required to understand this fic. However, at least a basic knowledge will help. Some stuff I only mention in passing without explanation. Some will be somewhat explained. If anything is too out there, feel free to let me know and I'll do my best to explain it. I'll try to put some stuff in the notes on the chapters if necessary.

If Herc’s honest with himself, “sparring” isn’t exactly the word he’d use to describe what Raleigh and Trevin are doing in his shuttle bay. He has to sidestep to avoid a skull-sized chunk of sheet metal that gets flung into the bulkhead hard enough to stick, then sidestep the other direction as Raleigh himself flies past and hits the same bulkhead with what should be a bone-crunching impact. The kid’s barriers flare blue-purple, and Herc winces. Even avoiding paralysis, an impact like that will probably leave Raleigh with a headache later.

“Getting tired, little man?”

Herc can see the way Trevin’s taunt gets under Raleigh’s skin, how the kid’s jaw clenches, and he could swear he hears teeth grinding from his place at the edge of the ring they’ve laid down with holos. Trev’s got about ten years’ more experience manipulating dark energy on Raleigh, and all of them know it. While Raleigh may have more raw force behind him, Trev’s always edged him out in the technique and endurance department. Which, in sparring matches like these, means that if the kid doesn’t take Trev down quick, well...

“Rals,” he takes a step forward, “you know Trev’s a shit. Don’t let him—”

Too late, Raleigh’s entire body glows bright enough that it makes Herc’s eyes ache, and then he’s become a streak of violent, blue light racing back into the ring. Trevin’s body glows, more muted, and with a gesture he deflects Raleigh’s charge. The kid, at least some of his training ingrained in him, comes out of it into a roll, hands flinging themselves forward. The light surrounding Trevin’s body shifts, becoming the subtly darker blue-black of Raleigh’s teke powers, and he’s flung backwards into the air.

“Ha!” Raleigh’s grinning when Trevin lands on his ass with an _oomph_ of air, “gotcha, old ma— _shit_ —”

Raleigh’s grin vanishes into shock as Trevin’s arm makes a jerking motion and the kid is pulled off his feet—suspended seemingly by one leg, given the way the rest of his limbs are dangling.

“ _Nngh_ , you _must_ be getting tired, Rals,” Trevin fires back, climbing to his feet, arm extended in front of him, “that gravity field was half-assed at best.”

Raleigh lets out a yell that’s pure adrenaline, body flaring bright again, and this time the blue streak he becomes collides with Trevin full-force. Trevin, however, raises a hand, a shimmering blue haze coalescing over his skin, and Raleigh’s charge flares their combined fields bright enough that it hurts to look at. In less than a second, the two of them have become a blur of arcing, biotically-augmented strikes and blocks.

Each contact between them generates a miniature explosion of force that Herc can feel in the deck beneath him, and he knows without a shadow of a doubt that if any of those blows connected, they're looking at, at the very _least_ , a fracture. Worst case scenario, someone loses a limb. Not to mention that these sort of close-range, more physical sorts of biotics are Raleigh’s speciality, putting him on par with Trev’s better endurance. Still, both of them are N7 trained. They didn't come this far by making such careless mistakes as accidentally crippling a teammate.

Which mean, when Raleigh’s biotics flare just a little too bright and Trevin’s next blow catches him in the stomach, Raleigh doesn't go flying ten meters like he would've with a full-force punch, half his abdominals ruptured. Instead, he only flies about three meters and crashes into a stack of crates with a tired groan. Kid tries to get up, breathing hard, limbs shaking, but Herc taps a button on his omnitool, and the holos lining the ring—and, really, if they’re just going to throw each other out of it, what’s the goddamn _point?_ —burn a bright red.

“That’s enough, kiddo.”

Trevin lets out a soft whoop as Herc takes the few steps to get at a cabinet mounted on the wall. Keys it open and grabs a few of the high-glucose packs the Alliance provides for biotics in the field, tossing them Trevin’s way. A purposeful wave of Trevin’s arm of has them both floating in the air, following him over to where Raleigh has given up his struggle against gravity. Trev offers one to Raleigh, and the kid snatches it up with a grateful grunt. Or at least, snatches it as best he can given the exhaustion visibly setting into his bones.

“You’re getting better, Rals,” Trevin says after he takes a long pull from his pack, smacking his lips and quickly checking a number his omnitool flashes at him. “That gravity field might not’ve been your best, but at over twenty minutes of solid usage, I’d say it was pretty damn good. You been hitting the sims without me?”

Raleigh lets out a tired, noncommittal sound and downs his entire pack in one go, squeezing the last of the clear fluid out of it and into his open mouth, face twisting as he swallows. Herc feels for the kid. He’d tried one of the packs once, and _only_ once—didn't feel right to expect Raleigh, Trevin, and Bruce to be forced to use them in the field without him experiencing it, too. Damn things are supposed to be palatable, since they’re packed with enough sugar and energy supplements to compensate for the thousands of calories burned up by biotics, yet somehow they still taste like grainy piss-water. Almost as bad as that cheap-ass beer Yancy always seems to find on his shore leave.

“Herc?”

Speak of the devil. Herc taps his omnitool to acknowledge the message, bringing up a holo of Yancy’s face above his palm. Kid’s squinting at something off-screen, probably his own display, the same way Herc’s seen him sight down a scope. Calculating. A practiced calm.

“Go ahead.”

“An encrypted message just came through from New Arcturus.”

“And?” Herc waits for the other shoe to drop. Yancy’s voice sounds tight. His boy doesn’t get like this unless it’s something big.

“AIDNN had me pull Chuck out of his sim time with Bruce to help parse the encryption on it. It’s flagged as black ops.”

A frown pulls Herc’s eyebrows together. AIDNN, short for Augmented Interface and Defense Neural Network, is the experimental shackled AI assigned to his ship after the success Shepard had with the Enhanced Defence Intelligence, or EDI. AIDNN isn’t as powerful as an unshackled Reaper-code-backed AI, but he—the techs always tell them AIDNN is an _it_ , but Herc can’t bring himself to think like that about a sentient electronic lifeform living in his ship’s systems—should be able to help Yancy process almost anything. If AIDNN needed Chuck’s expertise in cryptology, then it had to be something truly counterintuitive. Which means…

A dull throbbing starts up behind Herc’s left eye.

“Black ops as in plausible deniability, or—”

“Black ops as in Chuck and AIDNN untangled a trojan from the file that they’re pretty sure would’ve fused our drive core unless you were the one to open it.”

“Not to intrude,” AIDNN’s synthetic voice pipes over the comm, “but that outcome is still a very real possibility. The virus itself contains code designed to override the fusion plant safeties. Though it is currently quarantined, I have detected additional layers of encryption within the virus code itself. I am working with Chuck to untangle the extra encryption, but a secondary or even tertiary failsafe is not yet out of the question.”

Herc rubs at the side of his head. Sighs. Switches to rubbing his eyes, spots dancing behind his eyelids without making the throbbing any better.

High-ranked N7s usually operate strike forces, small units of twenty or fewer soldiers that go on high-risk, high-reward missions. Most of those missions carry even odds of ending with the team spaced, riddled full of bullet holes, or in full body casts. In return, N7s get to pick their teams, are given the most advanced equipment the Alliance can afford, and even get a small measure of autonomy.

In other words, N7s are the elite of the Alliance troops. They’re given the best, and are expected to get results in return. And if they don’t get results, well. Most times, it’s because they’re not walking off the dozens of new orifices they’ve recently acquired.

And most of their missions are classified. So, _most_ N7s have small teams and small ships to match. It’s just easier that way.

Herc has a cruiser. The _Sydney_. Crew of close to eighty-five, all told. Larger than a frigate, but significantly smaller than a dreadnaught. Because she’s got all the newest bells and whistles, she has stealth tech—stealth tech that only lasts about three hours before overheating, sure, but it’s more than nothing, especially on a ship this size. Helps to get them into messes without being spotted. Getting out might be a bit harder, but their girl is equipped to deal with that.

The _Sydney_ ’s broadsides are riddled with a mixture of standard magnetic acceleration cannons, or MACs, and frigate-sized magnetic hydrodynamic cannons—”hy-mag” cannons, as Chuck and Bruce both lovingly call them. Unlike the MACs, which accelerate a solid slug, hy-mags accelerate a stream of superheated liquid metal to a measurable fraction of the speed of light, delivering enough of a punch to rip damn near anything short of a dreadnaught to shreds with only a few salvos. And, in addition to the broadside guns, the _Sydney_ has more hy-mags mounted at various points along her hull for point defense.

And to top it off, her main gun is a scaled-down version of a dreadnaught’s hy-mag cannon, delivering about the same power as an old dreadnaught-standard MAC. Nothing _that_ hits dead-on walks away happy. Or, usually, at all.

Hell, the Alliance had even sprung for an experimental blue-green-shifted GARDIAN system. Nearly six times the coherence and energy delivery of the standard IR systems, but infinitely more finicky and likely to melt itself to slag. Not to mention switching it on lights them up like a relay gone haywire to any sensors in the entire star system.

And the whole thing can be placed under the control of an AI with better reaction time and aim than any of them could hope to achieve.

In short, the _Sydney_ has teeth. She’s a big, _loud_ tank of a ship, and there are six N7s serving on her to boot: Herc, and the five under his command. And, on top of that, they have a complement of about thirty marines serving under them as extra muscle—and, to date, they’ve never had to perform a complete deployment.

They don’t _do_ black ops. They make too much fucking noise.

The throbbing spreads to behind both eyes. Herc pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Route it to command quarters. I’ll take it there.”

“Message has been loaded to your private console,” AIDNN confirms.

“Just, y’know, maybe don’t take too long to view it.”

Yancy sounds like he’s trying to make a joke. Herc doesn’t laugh, though at least his impending headache seems to get incrementally better. He grunts an affirmative before cutting the connection with a wave of his hand. Turns back to where Trevin is supporting a shaky Raleigh. The kid is grinning loopily—probably the sugar rush finally getting to him—looking for all the world like a floppy, overgrown puppy that hasn’t quite figured out how long his limbs actually are. Herc has to suppress the urge to kiss that silly smile off his face.

There will be plenty of time for that later, when none of them are on duty.

“Take him to his bunk, Trev’,” he says, keeping his tone mild. “Both of you make sure to get at least four hours’ rest.”

Trevin nods to him, his own smile betraying his fatigue.

“Whatever you say, babe.”

“ _Sir_ ,” Herc corrects automatically, no heat behind it, “we’re on duty, Trev’.”

“Just be glad this one’s not calling you _daddy_ ,” Trevin chuckles, readjusting his grip on Raleigh and moving them towards the elevator. “After all,  _sir_ ,” he may be tired, but Trev’ still has that twinkle in his eye, the mischievous little shit, “you’re only in charge because the ship’s yours.”

“And because I was offered promotion to rear admiral,” Herc fires back.

“That you turned down.”

“Because of _us_ ,” Raleigh sing-songs in Trev’s arms, making a half-hearted attempt to waylay his and Trevin’s journey to the elevator back towards Herc. “Because you _lo-ove_ us.”

A smile creeps across Herc’s face. He doesn’t deny it.

“Go get some sleep, love,” he calls over to them as the elevator _dings_ its arrival, doors sliding open.

If asked, he wouldn’t’ve been able to say which of them he’d been talking to.

 

———

 

In the end, the message is just as cryptic and confusing after it’s opened.

“Report to the attached coordinates, Captain,” says the deep tone of Fleet Admiral David Anderson, one of the heroes of the Reaper War. He sounds like he’s got more smoke in his voice than the last time Herc heard him speak during the war. Other than that, the man’s tone is unreadable. “Await further instructions upon arrival. Arcturus out.”

A display pops up on the screen, flashing the location and a sixty-second countdown. Herc knows enough about this back-alley bullshit to know the message is going to scramble, delete, re-scramble, and re-delete itself once the timer hits zero. He grabs a datapad from his desk and uses it to transfer the coordinates to Tendo. His comm beeps an affirmative on the transfer before a soft ping indicates an incoming reply.

“Herc? You sure about this place?”

Tendo definitely sounds like he’s _not_ sure, but Herc can hear the low chatter of the bridge crew in the background as they ready the ship for transit. Can already feel the telltale drag of them accelerating towards the edge of the system. His pilot’s already locked in their course and has them underway.

Even though Tendo regularly ditches protocol and calls Herc by his first name, Herc is willing to allow it given Tendo’s unwavering loyalty and undeniable skill. After all, he’s never seen another cruiser pull some of the stunts Tendo’s put the _Sydney_ through. He might get them all killed one day doing something reckless, but so far it’s kept them safer than not.

“As sure as I can be, lieutenant,” he sighs. “Did you confirm with AIDNN? Is there something wrong?”

“Yeah, and no boss, nothing exactly _wrong_ , it’s just that these coordinates are literally nowhere. Between star systems. I doubt we’re gonna find much of anything out there.”

Herc slashes his hand horizontally through the air, trusting the wall display to determine his intent. A galaxy map bursts into color within his quarters before zooming in on their current location burning to the fringes of the Vular system towards...he squints at the display. Harsa, the primary relay system for this cluster. Their current course appears as a light blue line, taking them through four relay jumps and several FTL burns between solar systems before arriving at their destination. Which is...

Herc swears lowly. The _Sydney_ is specced to withstand any number of different environmental stresses, from the crushing atmosphere of a brown dwarf gas giant to the ionizing radiation of a solar flare. However, the Styx Theta cluster is uncomfortably close to the galactic center. Already, the nav computer is sending him a soft message to manually verify his course, blinking a muted red and informing him that the space between Archeron and Erebus experiences unpredictable, potentially deadly gravitational anomalies. He swipes the alert away.

“You all good, Herc?” Tendo’s voice probably doesn’t sound anything other than it’s usual semi-professional tone to most of the crew surrounding him in the CIC, but Herc can hear the undercurrent of worry there. Hell, Tendo’s probably the single person he knows best on his crew, outside of his N7 team.

“I just hate this black-ops shit,” Herc grumbles, knuckling at an eye. “I know as much as you do. If there’s anything there, I doubt it’s friendly.”

He lets out a breath through his nose as he thinks, pacing the space between his desk and the bulkhead. Contrary to what most people want or want to believe, interstellar travel is not instantaneous. At sublight, with a good drive core powering the ship, an average-sized solar system can be crossed in less than a day—in an older ship, it might take anywhere from a few days to a little over a week. Traversing the spaces _between_ star systems, though, takes days, even using faster-than-light travel.

Relays knock out nearly all the time between separate clusters of star systems—save for the few hours of preparations and transit mass calculations, and the few seconds of actual transit time. However, relays can only go to a set of predetermined locations, and always to a different cluster. Despite all the knowledge they'd gained in the wake of the Reaper War, the Alliance and Council are no closer to learning how to reprogram the primary relays already in existence—the longest-range relays that travel exclusively between two specific clusters. They've also yet to actually begin their announced project of adding new secondary relays—those that are shorter-range, but can transit to several different clusters—to the dozens of systems that have petitioned for one. Perhaps, in the future, traveling to any system will be as simple as a few secondary relay jumps.

But not yet.

So, for now, they're still stuck with the limited relay system they've always had.

Their destination requires them to jump to several different clusters, and, at each one, burn at FTL to a system with another relay to take them the next step of the way. And then, of course, they’re going to finish somewhere outside of any star system, what looks on the map to be at least a day’s trip at FTL out of Erebus.

It’s going to take time.

Time they can use to their advantage.

“Send all available data on the cluster to engineering and coordinate with them. Get AIDNN to devote some processing power to it too, once he can spare some. I don’t want any surprises when we arrive.”

 _Like a random high-energy gravity wave overloading the drive core and killing us all_. He doesn’t voice the thought, but he’s fairly certain Tendo is thinking something along the same lines.

“Will do, boss. Want me to get Chuck or Bruce on it too?”

Herc snorts. Almost laughs, if he’s honest with himself.

“Like you could fuckin’ stop them even if you wanted to.”

Tendo does laugh, an easy sound.

“I hear you. ETA to the nav point is about 233 hours.”

Herc does the math in his head. Just under ten days. Plenty of time to prepare. Hopefully it’s enough to make sure they don’t fall out of the sky the second they arrive.

“Good, keep me updated. Hansen out.”

Herc slashes his hand again, this time vertically, and the comm display and galaxy map both wink out of existence. He glances down at the datapad he’s been fiddling with before tossing it back onto his desk. Takes his seat, allowing the material of his chair to contour to his body, before calling up his terminal. He has seventeen new messages since he’d checked before he’d agreed to act as referee for Trev’ and Raleigh’s little match.

Ah, the glory of having his own command.

At least half of the notifications are from automated systems, sending him the results of their daily self-diagnostics with attached all-clears. Those are, blessedly, quick. The remainder are from the crew. At least half of _those_ are trivial requests that only need his approval as a matter of official channels—small things that could've happened unofficially without him ever knowing or even realizing, like authorizing a duty-rotation swap between several marines for two days. Probably someone’s birthday.

(A quick search reveals it’s Dunbar. Herc makes a quick note on his omnitool to send her a message the day of.)

Of the four remaining messages, two shouldn’t’ve gone to him in the first place, since he's neither the chief engineer nor the pilot. The last two, though...those actually require his attention. Both are accusations of wrongdoing, meaning Herc gets to spend at least an hour on each accessing the internal cams and comm records, scrolling through several days’ footage and audio files. In the end, the wrench jockey claiming to have her tools stolen has really just been a victim of someone else borrowing and forgetting to return them. Herc switches their shifts so they can coincide and work it out, then forwards his findings. The second case, a claim of pranking gone too far, ends with the perpetrator assigned shit duty for the time they're traveling to the Styx Theta.

Christ, there are some days he wonders why the hell he does this.   

As Herc’s closing the messages screen on his terminal, rubbing at his scratchy eyes—damn holos aren’t any easier on him than old-style screens—a faint, familiar rush of static washes over his skin. Distantly, he can hear the hull pinging softly in time. Gravity slants slightly to one side, then the other, before finally normalizing. A glance at his window—one of the few luxuries he allows himself in his quarters, otherwise he’d’ve had it permanently sealed for the structural weakness—shows the stars streaking past in grey-tinged Doppler shift.

They’ve gone to FTL.

Almost on cue, his cabin door slides open with a near-silent pneumatic hiss. There are only five people on the ship who can do that without his say-so, so Herc just snorts when he sees Trevin supporting a bleary-looking Raleigh. Trev’s giving him a look somewhere between exasperated and fond. Raleigh tends to do that to people.

“Cah-can’t sleep,” Raleigh gets out through a yawn, his head lolling a bit, looking for all the world like he's already asleep on his feet. “C’n I sleep ‘n here?”

Herc glances at Trevin, who rolls his eyes. Neither of them, Herc finds himself thinking, have the heart to call the kid on his bullshit.

“Sure, sweetheart,” he says, smile pulling at his features. “You know you’re always welcome here.”

Something else, mumbled too low to hear, snakes out from Raleigh’s lips. Herc cocks an eyebrow at Trev, who sighs—not unfondly—and translates.

“He wants to know if you’ll join him. Or, sorry,” Trevin cocks his head to the side, listening as Raleigh tilts his head towards Trevin and mumbles something else, more forcefully, “if you’ll join _us_. I’ve apparently been drafted.”

Herc points at the bed with his chin, and Trev obligingly starts moving himself and Raleigh towards it.

“Let me check how much bullshit needs my attention first.”

He swipes through the displays on his terminal, bringing up the section for daily and weekly reports from the different parts of the ship. He skims through the subject lines, making sure nothing needs his attention immediately, but sighs when he gets to the end of the list.

The last item is a report from engineering about preliminary ideas for potential Styx Theta anomalies. So far, only about an hour after he’d assigned them their task, they’ve already gotten about six ideas together. Two he can easily dismiss with the helpful notes AIDNN has included, one as outside of their means, and the other as carrying too high a risk of irradiating the ship. The other four, though, look like they might be plausible. Which means he needs to read them thoroughly, make notes and recommendations, double-check with AIDNN, and check that Mako and her team haven’t come up with anything better in the two or more hours it’ll take him. And if they have, then he gets to spend hours reading over _those_ reports.

Annoyance may claw at his belly, but it’s mixed with no small amount of pride. After all, he _did_ choose his crew for a reason. They truly are the best at what they do, if a bit literal when he says to keep him in the loop.

“I’m sorry, love,” he looks back up at Raleigh and Trev’ where they’re getting situated on the bed that dominates half of his room. “I’ve got some things I have to do.”

The pout Raleigh gives him for that is already halfway to sleep and entirely too adorable. And too damn effective. Herc can feel his resolve flaking at the edges.

“Want me to call one of the others instead?”

That gets him a droop of Raleigh’s head into Trevin’s chest where Trev’s situated himself under the kid, allowing himself to be used as a surrogate body pillow.

“I think that’s a yes,” Trevin grins at Herc, his eyes dancing with something like quiet admiration behind the fatigue. “Honestly, I'm surprised he didn't pass out during our match if this is what he's like even after a cal-pack.”

Really, the kid is too much sometimes. Too damn cute. Too much like an actual puppy. Probably the best part is that Herc’s about ninety five...okay, ninety percent sure Raleigh isn’t doing it on purpose. He’s still pouting, so Herc lets the air in his lungs out in a rush before standing and making his way over to the bed. Props himself on the sheets halfway up where Raleigh’s wrapped himself halfway on top of Trevin, and leans down to press a soft kiss to the kid’s temple. Raleigh, the cheeky little thing, twists until his pout meets Herc’s lips for the scantest of moments. When he re-settles, Herc can see the kid has a slow smile creeping across his face.

 _Cheeky_.

“Who d’you want me to call?”

Raleigh is quiet for a few seconds before he murmurs something that Herc barely makes out as “Yancy.”

In the few seconds between when Herc sends out the comm on his omnitool and Yancy picks up, he tangles the fingers of his free hand into Raleigh’s hair, scratching at the kid’s scalp.

“Yeah, Herc?” Yancy answers, eyebrow raised when his video kicks in. Herc increases the pressure of his fingertips by a fraction, pulling a tired, but definitely pleased, moan out of Raleigh. Yancy must hear—which had been half the point, anyway—because his eyebrows climb higher.

“That Rals?”

“Sure is,” Herc nods.

“Silly thing pushed himself too hard,” Trevin smiles at the display above Herc’s wrist, though he must know Yancy can't see him. “He's asking for his big brother.”

Yancy's entire face softens and opens into a smile.

“Well, I guess I shouldn't leave him waiting then. Herc?”

“Permission granted,” Herc waves away the tacit request. “Come take care of your brother, Yance. I would, but I have work to do.”

Yancy raises a single brow. Looks like he's about to ask a question. Then must think better of it, because he closes his mouth and nods, no doubt realizing—or at least guessing—it has to do with the black ops message.

“I'll be there in ten minutes.”

Yancy makes it in less than five. When he crawls into the bed beside Raleigh, his and Trevin’s bodies sandwiching his younger brother, Herc glances up from his terminal just in time to see Yancy lean down and place a gentle kiss on Raleigh’s pouting lips. The kid’s face smooths out completely, like his exhaustion has vanished with that simple touch, and sinks into the arms that bracket him. As Trevin curls closer and Yancy tucks his little brother’s head against his chest—never mind the half-foot Raleigh has on his older brother—Herc can’t help but watch.

Looking at them, an errant thought crosses his mind.

_Oh. Right._

That’s why he does it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reapers: sentient machines involved in a cyclical destruction of all spacefaring organic life in the galaxy every 50,000 years for the purpose of preventing them from reaching a technological peak at which their technological creations would surpass them. (Machines preventing a machine apocalypse by causing their own, controlled machine apocalypse. I'm not gonna argue for it making sense) Note: with every extinction cycle, the Reapers would preserve the knowledge gained during that cycle, hoping that one day evolution would provide the information necessary to make them unnecessary. 
> 
> Reaper War: The name given to the year-long conflict where the Reapers tried to kill all life in the galaxy. Again. A human soldier, Commander John Shepard, stopped them, and ultimately unlocked the knowledge stored in the Reapers for the Galaxy's use. 
> 
> Mass effect fields: similar to a magnetic field, except they affect the mass of a pocket of spacetime. Produced by running a current through the fictional Element Zero, also called eezo. An eezo drive core in a ship enables FTL by enveloping the ship in a mass effect field that drastically reduces the ship's mass. It is important to note that, for handewavey reasons, this effect mostly seems to ignore inertia when increasing mass or removing a mass-decreasing field. 
> 
> Mass relays: massive element zero engines that are free-floating in space, produced long ago and abandoned by their creators. Moon-sized (literally; the relay in the sol system was encased in ice and mistake for the moon Charon around Pluto), they are capable of reducing a ship's effective mass to almost zero and flinging it across thousands of light years in a few seconds. Galactic civilization is mostly built around relays and the systems that contain them. 
> 
> Biotics: Jedi powers, sort of, but with science. Biotics (people who can use biotics...clever, right?) are made when an individual is exposed to Element zero in the womb and nodules of Element Zero are incorporated into the nervous system. The 30% of the time this doesn't produce horrific tumors, instead the nodules of eezo can be activated by the local currents of the neurons they're a part of. Biotics can activate their powers by activating specific neural pathways to produce specific effects. These effects usually boil down to two broadtypes of powers. 1: gravity powers (telekinesis or 'teke' powers), like lifting something into the air, throwing something, applying concussive force, etc. Some biotics, called vanguards, use their powers as a body-size variant on how FTL engines work to propel ("biotic charge") themselves into their enemies with a large concussive force on impact. Gravity powers are also a basis of how kinetic barriers work, as those create oscillating gravity fields that deflect projectiles away. 2: warp powers. If mass effect fields are allowed to destabilize, they effively begin to tear anything that touches them apart at the molecular level. This can be used on a personnel level, or, a common armament on ships (that has mostly replaced nukes) is a complement of warp torpedoes that simply tear the enemy ships apart rather than attempt to explode them. All biotic powers can be simplified down to one or both of these processes.


	2. Chapter 2

Balancing a relationship with five other people takes up more time that Herc would’ve ever imagined. And in a relationship like the one they have, balance and communication are key. They need to fight to keep what they have—in both the literal and figurative senses—and making sure none of them feel excluded or ignored in any way is a priority. Thankfully, the vastness of the stars means that they get lots of time to themselves when they don’t have to be on duty.  

So, when he’s on his 8-hour off-duty shift, Herc rotates his time between each of them as best as he can. Mostly, though, it depends on how their schedules manage to match up.

 

———

 

A good deal of his time with Chuck is spent in the simulator. Sometimes some of the others come along, and sometimes they don’t. He and Chuck may be father and son, but they’ve never been good at communicating. Not since Angie died. Her death had been followed by ten years of hardly communicating at all, and even then no more than a handful of words that weren’t screamed at the top of their lungs.

And then Chuck, fresh from his first deployment, body refined to a fighting machine of tendon and bone and muscle, had come home, slammed his father against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster, and claimed his mouth in a searing kiss. At the time, the thought may have crossed Herc’s mind that it was wrong, that he shouldn’t’ve been as okay with the whole situation as he’d been, but, well.

This was his son, finally come home. This was his son breathing words over his tongue that neither of them had spoken in a decade. This was his son asking for— _taking_ —his father’s affection, as if he felt he finally deserved it.

( _As if_ , Herc had found himself thinking, _there had_ _ever_ _been a time when Chuck deserved anything less than his father’s full love and attention._ )

Maybe his perception was a little skewed. Maybe he didn’t care.

After that, they’d started talking more, although most of it had been done with their bodies. It’s still their way. Anything they need to say to one another, they tend to say with the way they cover one another in the middle of a fight, bullets whizzing overhead, explosions ringing in their ears. It’s in the way they spar, fists colliding and limbs winding in complex patterns until both of them are a panting mess. It’s in the hot press of skin on skin as they twist and moan together, moving with a synchronicity that seems almost supernatural at times.

They don’t need words. They just need each other.

 

———

 

A hail of bullets whines through the air where Yancy had just been, a split-second before Herc had grabbed his armor and thrown them both bodily into the dirt.

“Fucking _watch_ yourself, seppo,” Chuck’s accent thickens in the height of the battle, making the years Herc and Angie and Scott all raised him in Australia stand out. Kid’s hunkered behind a rocky outcropping barely tall enough to hide his massive bulk from the storm of incoming fire. “Recon specialist my fucking _ass._ ”

Herc doesn’t comment as he rolls, finding shelter in the form of the burned-out husk of a single-man crawler. Doesn’t bother worrying about Yancy—the kid’s status monitor is already telling him Yancy’s cloaked and is heading away, out of their potential lines of fire. Beneath his knees, the streets of some Batarian colony he can never remember the name of are still pocked and torn from the Reaper invasion. The air still tastes like the mix of ozone and soot that follows orbital bombardments, even through his filters. The gravity—1.6 times Earth standard—tugs at his bones, making his limbs feel like they’re made of lead. Apparently the field generators for the colony aren’t working anymore, likely on account of them being, well, blasted from orbit. His armor had attempted to compensate when they first landed, a miniature mass effect field generator booting up, but then they’d started getting shot at. He’ll gladly take the gravity over a bullet—or the goddamn _lance_ that’d embedded itself in the wall near his shoulder and exploded with the force of a small grenade.

At least that’d told him who was shooting at them, though. Almost no one uses Kishocks but the Batarians, and then only pirates—not slavers, since they want to actually take their victims alive. And it seems whoever is lugging it around had modified the hell out of the thing.

Additional divots and furrows appear in the slate material the Batarians used to line their roads, and over the sound of the shooting he can hear someone shouting insults at them in what his HUD informs him is the high-caste Batarian language. The translations appear at the periphery of his lower vision, and a quick glance tells him his mother’s just been accused of having hidden values.

Huh. Probably an idiom.

Then again, what does he know? A majority of his encounters with Batarians have been in unofficial skirmishes and pirate raids like this one.

“Goddamn bastards,” Chuck’s voice breaks over the comms as the kid leans around cover to send a few rounds their enemy’s way, likely to get them to stop firing at them for at least a second, maybe two. It doesn’t work. “Gonna burn their rifles out if they keep shooting like this.”

As if in answer, the onslaught stops, but only long enough for the loud reports of multiple pistols to ring out instead. A single, large hole blossoms in the metal Herc’s using for cover not three inches from where he’s standing. Whatever they’re shooting with over there, it’s got some kick to it. Another slug perforates the metal a foot above where he’s crouched.

“Goddamnit,” he growls, frustration a hot knot in his gut. He only has four grenade charges left in his belt, and after that he’ll be dry until he can minifacture more. “We need to get to better cover,” he tells Chuck, gesturing at the broken down colony buildings they’d been heading for originally.

“No _shit_ ,” he can barely see Chuck rolling his eyes through the kid’s tinted faceplate. “How in the fuck’re we supposed to—”

Another Kishock lance embeds itself in the slate just behind Chuck. Herc has enough time to note that it’s angled _sideways_ — _fuck they’re flanking us_ —with a sick kind of dread before it detonates, throwing Chuck forward and up. His son’s shields flare blue-white with the blast, distorting wildly and flickering when several incoming bullets splash over the shielded portions of Chuck’s body that are now exposed over his cover. Miraculously, none of the shots get through.

“Yancy!” Herc doesn’t quite _yell_ , but it’s a near thing, his heart in his throat. “Yancy take that son of a bitch out and get me a distribution.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, instead grabs a grenade core from his belt, syncs it to his omnitool to minifacture the trigger and charge it, then thumbs the release and lobs it over his cover. Dashes over towards Chuck, his footsteps cracking the ground with the weight of his armor, his joints creaking in protest. Several colorful swears are yelled into the dust, and the grenade explodes a split second after a thunderous report rings out from the building Herc is now dragging Chuck towards, an arm around his son’s waist. Behind them, Herc hears a heavy _thud_ as something weighing probably about three hundred kilos smashes to the ground—about the combined weights of an average Batarian and a suit of battle armor, plus or minus a few kilos for the weight of the modified Kishock.

Yancy doesn’t say anything beyond a low, “Done,” his voice gone distant the way it does when he’s in a firefight.

To his credit, Chuck shrugs off Herc’s arm with a growled, “I’m _fine_ , old man, worry about yourself.” Grunts as he twists, his omnitool coalescing plasma particles into a glowing sphere that he launches in the general direction the shots have been coming from. Released from confinement when the sphere makes contact with the first solid surface it finds, the fire crawls outward in a sphere as the heat spreads so rapidly the air quite literally explodes.

Swearing is still drifting to them, so they obviously didn’t get all of them. At least the bullets have stopped for now.

As they crash through the ruined doors and up the stairs, Herc ushers his son up, then pauses to sync up another grenade core. Sets the trigger to be proximity-sensitive, then adheres it to the bottom step. Another _crack_ rings out above him—Yancy—followed by sharp, staccato bursts—Chuck. He heads toward the sound, a stray bullet glancing off his shields.

“How many?”

“Maybe two dozen, most in cover,” Yancy reports, his rifle jumping in his arms with a sound that would’ve been deafening without the dampening in all their helmets. “All of them left in cover.”

“Chuck?”

“Tagging them,” his son is already typing on his omnitool, display flashing green, then red, then green again in time with a corner of Herc’s HUD that tells him his suit’s tiny sensor array is being piggybacked.

Herc’s helmet isolates movement heading towards the doors beneath them while Yancy is swapping out his thermal clip, and lets off a few shots of his own. The two-shot rifle Bruce had made for him is the best damn thing he’s ever used—not even the Alliance R&D has been able to outdo it, in his mind—but at this angle his second shot goes wide. He watches as one of the Batarians lets out a guttural cry and goes down, clutching at his leg, while the ground beside him detonates in a small puff of debris. Herc lets out a breath, corrects his aim, and squeezes the trigger again.

This time, both shots hit.

The second batarian—the one still moving—howls as the first slug overloads his shields and embeds itself in his shoulder, the second one following a few milliseconds later. He doesn’t have time to make much more sound than that, though, because a third of his torso explodes in gore as the second bullet does its work, detonating internally after a short delay.

“Found them all,” Chuck grunts, triumphant, not the least bit smug—it’s the small lies that get him through the day sometimes—and Herc watches as nineteen red outlines appear on his display. One of them is the Batarian he only wounded, and he wastes no time in taking the half-second necessary to aim his next shots directly between the alien’s eyes.

After that, it’s a simple matter of mop-up. The pirates had gotten the jump on them, sure, but now they have high ground, good sight lines, and, apparently, far superior gear. One of the pirates disappears from sensors for a few seconds, but an explosion downstairs tells Herc that his little surprise had worked. Thankfully, none of the rest of them try the same trick, probably figuring he’d booby trapped the way in even further.

The battle becomes a familiar exercise in leaning out of cover to take a few shots when he can, changing positions, switching floors, coordinating Yancy’s and Chuck’s strikes for maximum effectiveness or to buy one of them a window to return fire, and reloading. Eventually, he barely notices his mouth making words, just the jump of his gun in his hands, the haptic click of the trigger, the grind-slide of the thermal clip latch. Then it’s only the sound of his breathing in his own helmet, the taste of his own sweat as it trickles into his eyes and down his face, the burn of exertion in his muscles.

At some point, reinforcements show up in an unarmed shuttle, dropping into the middle of the road like the uncoordinated morons they are, but by that point Herc and his team have found their rhythm. None of the bastards stand a chance.

Yancy’s the one who takes down the last pirate. Herc doesn’t see him do it, since Yancy had moved up a floor at some point, but he hears the report of the kid’s Widow clearly enough at the same time that the last red dot disappears. From his place fifteen meters to Herc’s right, in another room, Chuck lets out a small snort that Herc identifies as satisfaction.

For a moment, Herc allows himself to just _breathe_ , suck oxygen into his lungs. The gravity is getting to him, he can tell, his legs and back aching, but he pushes that out of his mind. He keys the comm.

“Report back, boys. Mission complete for now.”

Next up is his omnitool. He flashes through the series of necessary commands, sighing internally but knowing that each step in the process is necessary. By the time the heavy clomp of familiar combat armor tromps up behind him, the program has just finished dishing out its visual warnings before he hits the override.

Around them, the walls flash once, seem to disconnect at the seams, and then dissolve in a slow cascade of pixels and data bits. Left behind are the gray, modular metal walls the holo had been projected over that fold themselves back into the floor, walls, and ceiling, the simulator taking the training exercise apart.

‘ _Alert. Gravity alteration in progress,_ ’ the computer informs him across the comm, its voice more sexless and flat than the one AIDNN had chosen. The same staticky feeling of going to FTL flows over Herc’s skin, and then he feels like a weight is being slowly lifted from his chest and shoulders.

‘ _Gravity alteration complete. Current gravity: 1 Earth standard_.’

Reaching up, Herc undoes the seals on his helmet, can see Yancy and Chuck doing the same through his faceplate. When he finally pulls it off, the cool, stale air of the simulator tastes like heaven. He shakes his head lightly, stretches his back to ease out all the kinks the higher gravity had created, and finally— _finally_ —wipes at the sweat that’s been dripping in his eye for the past ten minutes at _least_.

The simulator’s not exactly standard on Alliance cruisers, but his certainly isn’t the only ship carrying one around. Frigates tend to be too small and lack the necessary extra power, so sims are usually restricted to cruisers, dreadnaughts, and carriers—hell, they’re almost _standard_ on carriers for pilots to get in extra practice time. Herc’d requested one because he goes fucking stir-crazy, cooped up for too long with nothing appropriately exhausting to do. Sure, a gym is cheaper and easier, but they already have one of those and a gym won’t help refine them to an organized fighting unit capable of having one another’s backs in the dark.

Besides, the sex after a successful sim is god damned mind-blowing.

Blinking his eyes open, he’s met by the flushed grins of his boys. Yancy’s hair is stuck together at the tips by his sweat and sticking up in all directions. It’s _technically_ longer than regulation, but whenever Herc suggests he get it cut, Yancy gives him that _pout_ that both Becket brothers mastered a long fucking time ago. The one that makes them look like kicked puppies. The one they both fucking know gets him _every fucking time_. They’re both little demons, and he wouldn’t have them any other way.

Yancy’s grin is, in a word, excited. Flushed. Full of pent-up energy. The kid goes into a zone when he’s acting as their sniper, shutting down his feelings, brain becoming something analytical and calm, his voice becoming flat and emotionless to match. Herc’d worried for a long time that it wasn’t healthy, that the kid would keep all his feelings buried and fall into a depression like so many others. Yet, somehow, his boy hasn’t. He has nightmares, sure, but once the fight is over, he becomes _hyper_ emotional. If he’d seen some shit, he’d sometimes break down sobbing in their room, or something in the shuttle if he couldn’t make it that far. Sometimes, like now, when things went well, they fought the good fight and it’s not quite _as_ real, the kid’s all smiles. All pent-up toothy grins and cheer from a training session where none of them died or, really, were even hurt that badly—even if the safeties prevent injuries worse than, say, a fracture.

Chuck’s grin, on the other hand, is predatory. Teeth worrying at his lower lip in a way that’s begging for kisses, that sets coals alight in Herc’s gut. His eyes flashing, smouldering, daring someone to fuck the smirk off his face. It’s a look Herc has had directed his way many times. It’s a look he’s never truly been able to resist. His heart feels like it’s suddenly beating too fast, never mind the eased strain of normal gravity. Despite the cooling meshwork against his skin, his armor feels too fucking hot, too fucking tight.

Chuck turns his grin on Yancy, and Yancy’s breath hitches. Herc can’t blame him.

“What—” Yancy’s voice comes out as a rasp, and he clears his throat, “what do you say we strip out of this shit and hit the showers?”

Heat flushing his entire body, some parts more than others, Herc nods.

“Quarters. Now.”

 

———

 

Raleigh spends a lot of his time in the observation deck. Herc’s found him in there in the middle of the kid’s own sleep shift, bringing up the window’s overlay to identify visible stars and display their information. Sometimes Herc will join him, fingers carding through short blond strands as Raleigh goes on and on about some anomaly or another in a certain solar system. He hums and grunts at the appropriate time, letting Raleigh’s voice flow over him, dropping soft kisses against the kid’s neck, his scalp, his fingers. Kid’s a sap, too, so sometimes Herc makes it his personal game to see how many disgustingly over-the-top displays of affection it takes to get a blush for his efforts.

If Raleigh’s not in the observation deck, one of his other usual haunts is the gym. As far as Herc can tell, kid spends equal amounts of time lifting weights in high-g fields with his body and with his biotics. He’s walked in before to find Raleigh sweating his ass off, nearly four hundred kilos of weights suspended a meter and a half off the deck. In 2.1g. When he participates in the kid’s biotic endurance training, it’s usually as a living weight.

Not that he’s that much of a challenge, but Raleigh swears up and down that lifting an actual person is better practice than an inanimate weight—something about the way people are constantly moving, even subconsciously.

Probably the moments Herc most treasures with Raleigh, though, are the ones when the kid is feeling especially touchy-feely. In those moments, he’ll tug Herc over him like a blanket. Herc will, of course, object, but eventually go along with the manhandling. Sometimes, it’s _nice_ to realize that at least one of his partners can literally throw him around if they want to, to feel secure in the arms of another and not have to be the strong one. Sometimes, in their cuddling-but-not, one or both of them will end up reading something on their datapad, enjoying the contact, taking it in. Other times, they may watch a vid together. Others, they sleep. In the most extreme cases, Raleigh will levitate them both off the mattress after turning the mass effect field generators for the room to less than quarter-g, clinging tightly to Herc with both his body and mind.

Those sorts of moments tend to happen with increased frequency if they’re at FTL for extended periods. Raleigh is a wanderer at heart, and if he’s confined for too long he starts going bugfuck crazy. It’s nothing he’s ever said aloud, not really, but Herc can see the signs clearly enough. The way Raleigh will bicker with his brother with increased frequency. The way he’ll bounce his thigh when they get food, or pound out a nervous rhythm with his fingers during meetings. How he’ll, possibly subconsciously, spend more of his free time in the observation decks.

One time, they’d had to burn at FTL for almost three weeks straight on just _one_ of the legs of their journey. Herc’d brought Raleigh to the simulator and disabled the gravity, floating with the kid in zero-g. Held him close as they’d simply tumbled, the fields at the edge of the room calibrated to catch and redirect them more gently than any mat or pillow. At one point, Herc had watched as the kid’d extended his reach to fill practically the entire simulator—something he hadn’t even known was _possible_ at the time—making the cargo bay-sized room fill with a low blue-black glow. For what felt like _hours_ , Raleigh had gently swayed and bobbed them about the room, dodging small objects that’d drifted out of their pockets, static tingling over Herc’s skin.  

Of course, another of Raleigh’s preferred methods for getting rid of his jitters is to have Herc fuck his brains out. And, well, Herc has a hard enough time denying his boys what they want, even on a normal day.

 

———

 

Even at FTL—maybe _especially_ at FTL—Herc has to admit that the stars are beautiful. Sure, the points of light are smudged and bleeding red-blue light from the Doppler effect, but it’s impossible not to be awed by the sheer _number_ of them, by the transient patterns of swirls and blinks and flares. He’s heard of soldiers who have panic attacks from the sheer _size_ of space once they’re out there, while others have ‘euphoria attacks’—similar but involving less panic and more giddiness. Either way, someone becomes useless until their team can calm them down or sedate them.

If he’s being honest, he’d done the first of those when he’d been on his first spacewalk. Not his finest moment. Raleigh, on the other hand, had done the latter, Herc had been there for it, and remembers clearly how the kid’d started giggling uncontrollably. How Raleigh’s laughter had been almost _giddy_ , but not quite hysterical. Musical, almost.

According to Yancy, Raleigh’s always loved the stars.

A day into their first FTL burn, the one that will take them to Harsa, finds Herc in the smaller of their two port observation lounges, datapad in hand, Raleigh curled into his side. One hand lazily draws patterns on Raleigh’s back while the other moves through pages on Mako’s latest proposals. Herc’s not an engineer, but he has a passable enough understanding of how his ship works to know that setting up a malleable mass effect field—one that will, in theory, shift in response to any gravitational anomaly and cancel it out, using AIDNN to make microsecond adjustments—is as likely to destroy them as it is to save them. Or if not, he's not comfortable having his entire drive core transformed into what amounts to a ship-sized warp torpedo.

Beside him, Raleigh shifts, his shoulder settling lower on Herc’s side as he rotates and slides down. Herc takes a moment to run his hand down the newly-exposed region of Raleigh’s back, nails catching the fabric of the kid’s uniform. Lets himself enjoy the soft, happy sound that gets him—if he keeps it up the kid’ll probably pass out here, curled up in his lap—for just a moment before he turns back to the reports.

The idea of multiple interlocking fields oscillating at different frequencies has merit. He’s just not sure if their core can withstand the complicated series of simultaneous currents the proposal calls for, or if they really want to be assembling miniature drive cores as backup field sources while mid-burn. He’ll probably throw Mako and Chuck and Bruce together in a room for an hour tomorrow and let them figure out any potential logistics—at this point, he's more than comfortable saying it's outside his area of expertise.

“What d’you think we’ll find when we get there?”

Raleigh’s voice rumbles Herc’s ribcage, more of a visceral sensation than an auditory one. Herc carefully shrugs, making sure not to jab Raleigh with an errant elbow, and moves his fingers until they're sifting through the kid’s messy blond mop. If they caught sight of the two of them, Bruce or Trev might laugh and say he's _petting_ Raleigh, to which Herc would probably give them the finger and absolutely not stop.

“If we’re lucky, empty space.”

Raleigh’s snort is superficial, nasal: all soft sound and rushing air, no vibration behind it.

“And when has our luck ever been _that_ good?”

“I dunno,” Herc pointedly doesn't look down, but he can feel the subtle shift in the texture of the kid’s hair well enough to know he's touching the thin line of white strands that march across the left-back of Raleigh’s skull, “I’d say we’ve had more than a few spots of good luck over the years.”

“You mean like the Alliance still ignoring fraternization rules and letting us serve under you?”

The kid is grinning. Herc still isn't looking, but it's obvious enough. It's his turn to snort, keying to the next page of scientific jargon he has to parse.

“ _That_ isn’t goddamn luck. They let me keep you all because we have twice the success rate of other teams that take missions half as difficult. And I have the fucking documentation to prove it. _And_ ,” he does look now, and Raleigh must feel it somehow because he twists his neck to peer back up at Herc, smiling softly, “I told them they could accept my resignation if they took you lot away from me.”

It's not a new conversation. Hell, it's not even a new issue or a new solution. Every now and then, some new admiral will challenge Herc, his team, and their unique _arrangement_. Hence why he _has_ all that documentation. Why he updates it every time they have a mission. Statistically, they're almost five times better than other teams, and their casualty rate—even when counting non-fatalities—is almost impossibly low. It's the kind of thing that only comes from having five other capable people at his back he trusts almost more than he trusts himself.

Raleigh’s smile widens, and he twists an arm at what must be an uncomfortable angle to let the backs of his fingers run through Herc’s stubble.

“Knew there was a reason why we kept you around.”

“Brat,” Herc grumbles, but goes back to his reading without further comment.

He might trace the scar on the back of Raleigh’s head a few times more, but the kid doesn’t comment on it.

 

———

Bruce and Trevin are hardly ever separate during their off-hours. The only exceptions are the rare instances when their schedules don’t sync up, And, even then, Herc has known Trevin to hunt down Bruce and bother him until, on one memorable occasion, Bruce had literally hurled his brother away from him with a biotically-augmented shove.

His time with them is often shared in much the same way.

 

———

 

Though the twins are always together, their interests are surprisingly disparate.

They’re a day out of their short stop in Utopia, out of waiting for the relay to be realigned to launch them to Fortuna. A few hours into day six of their overall trip. About sixty seven hours left in this burn towards Pax, then they’ll be in Acheron, with about twenty five more hours of FTL out-system ahead of them. And then they’ll finally be there. Herc and the twins are passing the time in Bruce’s personal working space.

Bruce is tinkering with a shotgun. Currently, he has it disassembled down to most of its component parts, each piece laid out systematically on the workbench in front of him. This is something Herc can share with him, at least to a certain extent. Bruce holds a hand out, and Herc wordlessly passes over the modified thermal clip assembly they’d spent the last hour rebuilding, borrowing parts normally reserved for sniper rifles with their massive heat generation per shot. Should increase the weapon’s clip efficiency by about 80%. In theory. The heavier housing does have the downside of increasing the weight by about a kilo and a half, which could mean the difference between being too slow or not—depending, of course, entirely upon the person using it.

Bruce slots the modified part into place, and begins to process of reassembling the gun. They’ll get Raleigh and Chuck to test it in the sims later, see if the extra weight is worth a decreased need to reload. Herc is confident at least one of them will be more than willing to try.

“Explain to me again why you can’t do to this what you did to my rifle,” Herc murmurs, watching as Bruce’s fingers skate over parts and pieces, latching and screwing and soldering them back together.

“Because he’d rather everyone have all their limbs intact,” Trevin answers for Bruce from where he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor beside them, eyes closed. Or, as Herc realizes as he squints, more accurately, floating about an inch above the floor. A blue sphere of energy floats between Trevin’s open palms, pulsing to a rhythm Herc can’t identify.

Herc scoffs at the same time as Bruce, though Bruce’s is muffled around the tool he’s currently holding between his teeth while his hands work. Herc reaches over without thinking and grabs said tool away, keeping it within easy reach if Bruce really does need it again.

“I’ve never had one of the explosive rounds detonate in my barrel before. Why would it suddenly do that just because it’s firing ten at once instead of the one?”

“It’s not a matter of it exploding,” Bruce’s voice sounds like he’s rolling his eyes as he takes back the tool Herc’d liberated a moment ago, “it’s a matter of it not being possible to minifacture that many rounds that quickly, especially if they’re not guaranteed to strike the same target at the same time.”

He puts aside the tool—something long and curved and with a tip that glows the dull blue of a miniature mass effect field—before grabbing several of the internal components of the barrel assembly. Has them slotted together faster than Herc can track, and, with a grunt, twists them back into place with what Herc recognizes to be the pellet generation module. Herc turns to grab a fresh alloy block when he sees Bruce hit the release for the old one, and watches the shiny grey-blue material he hands over slide into place with a satisfying _click_. The normally rote maintenance job—one even the most rookie marine is trained to do—looks significantly more impressive with half the gun’s guts still strewn around.  

“The problem,” Bruce continues, using the same mass effect field tool to lock parts together, the soft scrapes and clacks of metal and ceramic adding punctuation to his words, “is that each round needs to be minifactured on the fly. It’s not like a few hundred years ago, where you have a HE round that’s ignited after hitting the target. The rifle I made you scans its target, calculates the distance, relative speeds, transit time, _everything_ , on the fly.”

“Though, of course, that's something almost every gun does nowadays” Trevin adds from the floor, voice level. A quick glance tells Herc that his eyes are still closed.

“The _point_ ,” Bruce continues as if he hadn’t been interrupted, and Herc has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling, “is that it then takes all that information to design a special time-delayed, armor-piercing shaped charge that is also soft enough to deform after _just_ the right amount of penetration to make sure it doesn’t just pass through your target. That takes a lot of extra processing power. And then, instead of just shaving a chunk of alloy like most projectiles, the gun has to minifacture that charge as a slug with a specific concentration of catalyst antagonists preventing the chemical reaction causing the explosion and accelerate it out of the barrel within microseconds. Or else it’ll detonate in the air. Or in your gun.”

Herc blinks.

“And, for a shotgun…?”

“Imagine having to do that even two times for two slugs that will hit different spots on your target, both at slightly different angles, at slightly different times, and have to go through armor of differing thickness. It’d be easier to just minifacture two ancient HE rounds, but that’d make it a few seconds between each time you could pull the trigger.”

Bruce actually pauses, casting a look Herc’s way.

“Now imagine doing it ten times. It doesn’t work. That’s why I added the shield-disabling shot to your rifle, so it can reduce the variables.”

“Alright, alright,” Herc raises his hands, chagrined but managing to smile. “I take your point. No penetrating explosives for the children.”

From the floor, Trevin snorts. The orb of energy in his hands pulses brightly once before settling again.

“They’re not children, Herc. They could handle it. Bruce just can’t build it.”

“Then why don’t you teach Raleigh your Asari meditation, if it helps you focus your biotics so much?” Herc fires back, gesturing to the energy contained between Trev’s palms. A look at Bruce tells him that Bruce’d ignored Trevin’s obvious bait. Not surprising, given how much practice the two of them give each other.

Trevin’s laughter isn’t unexpected, but the force of it catches Herc by surprise. The orb of light dances and sparkles as if it's laughing, too.

“You really think _Raleigh_ can sit still long enough for something like this?”

Herc feels his eyebrows pulling together before returning to rest, his neck nodding his head as the question connects thoughts in his mind.

“Fair point,” he admits, “but he needs as much help as he can get. You really don’t think he can do it?”

“I think,” Trevin lets the orb dissipate with an almost not-there _pop_ of power, wiping imaginary tears from the corner of his eye before settling himself once again, legs still crossed, lips still curled in a grin, “that he could do it for a few minutes before tiring himself out or being distracted by something,” his eyes rake up Herc’s body meaningfully, “or _someone_.”

“Oh is that all I am to you?” Herc is well aware he’s being a cheeky asshole—probably a consequence of them discussing Raleigh, really. “A distraction?”

Instead of answering with words right away, Herc is enveloped in a tingling field that spreads over his skin and tugs him by his navel towards Trevin’s crouched form. Gentle pushes and pulls curl his spine until Trevin can levitate himself a few inches off the floor to bring their lips together.

“Never _just_ a distraction,” the bastard whispers against Herc’s lips, a faint growl hidden there, before releasing him.

He may not fall as gracefully as he could've, but Herc will be damned if he’ll admit aloud it's because the pleasant tingling is still buzzing through his entire body. Or the fact that he's grinning like a goddamn loon.

 

———

 

Perhaps the one who manages to continually surprise Herc the most is Yancy. Lately, when their schedules line up, Yancy insists they cook for the crew. Kid claims he's been learning from extranet vids and shit, but Herc has it on good authority—meaning Raleigh—that Yancy’s always been like this.

After their parents were gone, Yancy had taken care of his little brother, including getting a job, paying Raleigh's way through school, putting food on the table; all of it. Yancy became Raleigh’s guardian, and Raleigh claims his brother did a better damn job of it than most parents he's met.

(Herc’s not even going to _try_ to argue that he did a better job, because that's an argument he'll lose in seconds flat. He flat-out failed Chuck when the sprog was growing up, and they all know it.)

Each time Yancy cooks, he somehow manages to take their meager rations and supplies and make them taste like something out of a restaurant back home. He’ll direct Herc in what to do, and Herc will help as best as he can, but compared to Yancy he’s a novice. Sometimes, one or more of the others will join in. After all, with approximately fifty mouths to feed at a given time—half of those being marines with little else to do but exercise, fuck, eat, sleep, repeat—preparing a meal for most of the conscious crew is a chore that requires as many hands as possible.   

Herc doesn’t mind, though. It’s time they get together, working towards a common goal that isn’t smearing some bastard’s blood all over the walls. It feels almost domestic. Normal—if that word could ever apply to anything about their lives.  

 

———

 

He and Yancy manage to have synchronized off-duty time on their eigth day at FTL. So, of course, Herc heads to the galley. When the lift stops and the mechanical doors whir open, he’s mildly surprised that the smell of something already working doesn’t wash over him. The galley is quiet, cabinets still closed, the dispensers’ status lights glowing a soft, pulsing green to indicate they’re available but still in standby.

The two crew members that drew the galley duty stick for this shift are both sitting together at a table, heads bent over their tablets, conversing softly. One of them—Garces, if Herc remembers correctly, from engineering—looks up, and his eyes widen when he sees Herc. He grabs his crewmate’s wrist and jerks it subtly. Her head swivels, and she has the same reaction. Herc recognizes her from his picks for the marines: Private Akibo, infiltration specialist and almost as much of a crack shot as Yancy. Before either of them can truly rise, he puts out his hand in a placating gesture.

“As you were,” he says, keeping his tone light, conversational. It seems to work, if the way both of them relax back into their seats is any indication. “Either of you know where to find Major Becket?”

“Sir?” Akibo’s voice has a tinge of an accent Herc can’t quite place, and as he watches she glances over at Garces before continuing. “Which one?”

Herc blinks, then scoffs out a laugh.

“Right, my mistake. The older one.”

“He was just coming into the gun battery when my shift ended,” Garces glances down to tap something on his tablet. “Want me to call down, see if he’s still there?”

Herc’s already shaking his head, turning back towards the lift with a wave.

“That’s alright. Wouldn’t want to take all the fun out of it, eh? Appreciate it.”

It takes him a further five minutes to navigate down to the battery, his steps purposeful. While the galley is fairly far forward on the ship, the equipment to keep the main gun running is as far aft as it can be without getting in the way of main engineering. After all, the hy-mag cannon that runs the length of the _Sydney_ is mostly a long, magnetized barrel. The first thing Herc notices upon entering is that chamber that liquefies the tungsten-alloy slug into the appropriate ammunitions is propped open, the flashing indicators on the main screen indicating the gun is on maintenance lockdown. Two engineers are around the door, and seem to be conversing with whoever is inside the gun via omnitool. Distantly, Herc can make out Bruce’s voice over their connection. It makes sense: Bruce is the one of them who best understands weaponry.

Yancy is opposite them, sitting in a space where the bulkhead meets the floor. His legs are crossed, his head bowed, as he taps something onto his omnitool. Herc can’t make out the glowing projection backwards, and doesn’t bother to try. Just moves towards him and watches the way the glowing colors paint Yancy’s face, softening the edges. How Yancy bites his lip as his eyes dart back and forth, clearly reading something. His his fingers dance on the projected keypad, providing input that the omnitool responds to seconds later with a new screen.

Herc’s not sure what gives him away, but at some point Yancy’s eyes focus past the plane of the screen and catch him. Yancy’s entire omnitool projection blinks out of existence as if it hadn’t been there in the first place.

“Hey,” Herc offers. “Is this a bad time?”

Yancy, in true Yancy fashion, huffs out a laugh.

“Why would it be a bad time?”

A deflection. The shrug that works its way through Herc’s shoulders feels too stiff, somehow.

“Dunno. Thought we had a lunch date.”

He keeps the words as far from pointed as he can. Even so, Yancy pinks.

“I—sorry. Yeah, I...I got caught in my own head. Sorry.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” the smile, at least, feels real, genuine, resting on a kernel of warmth in his gut that Herc has come to associate with the five other men in his life. He slowly lowers himself down until he’s shoulder to shoulder with Yancy, aware of Yancy’s eyes on him the entire way. Once he’s settled with a low grunt, he gestures at the arm that’d been projecting the omnitool. “Anything you want to share?”

He really tries not to stare at how, up close, Yancy’s lips are clearly wet and slightly red from being chewed on. Or how, at this new angle, the overhead lights make Yancy’s hair look like spun rose gold, bringing out the red highlights no one ever believes are there. Yancy’s eyes look like stormclouds, dark blue-gray and full of some kind of warning Herc is pretty sure he’s going to ignore anyway.

After a pause, Yancy sighs, breaking the eye contact they’d been holding to look down at his own arm. If he didn’t know better, Herc would think that something like guilt crosses over Yancy’s face.

“I was trying to figure out how to make...us...official.”

Herc blinks.

“That’s...not small. Is this something you’ve been thinking about for a while?”

The kernel of warmth feels like it gets about twice as hot when Yancy nods.

“Ever since that time you were trapped under that collapsing rubble in that old Cerberus facility a year or so back. I thought Raleigh and Trev’ and Bruce were going to kill themselves lifting everything to try to get you out. It...it got me thinking. About,” Yancy fidgets, and the motion is so unlike him Herc is taken aback for a second, though Yancy doesn’t seem to notice, “about things that we might’ve said but, really, how much does any of that mean without the actions behind it?”

“Yance,” Herc starts, but Yancy cuts him off with a look. That warning is still there in his eyes, but this time Herc listens to it.

“I’m not talking about...about _that_ ,” there’s a soft chuckle burbling up in Herc’s chest, but he shoves it back down, “about _fucking_ or _sex_ or anything like that. Or, hell, I’m not even talking about taking a bullet for one another. We’ve all been there. We _know_ we love one another. What we mean to each other. _We_ do. I just...sometimes, I want the whole world to know, too.”

There’s not much Herc can do to that except nod, so it’s all he does. Well, that and reach one hand over to lace their fingers together. Yancy lets him do that, at least, eyes shifting to the floor.

“I’ve been looking up ways we could do it,” Yancy starts again after several minutes. “Multi-partner marriages are legal, but obviously,” he casts a glance over at Herc before going back to the deck plating, “there are some issues with our current setup. Legally-speaking.”

“But we know that,” Herc squeezes Yancy’s hand, and is gratified by a soft return squeeze. “We’ve known that. Why’re you driving yourself up the wall about this?”

Yancy goes back to chewing his lip. It shouldn’t be as erotic as it is.

“I...had a thought about it. It seemed silly at first, but the more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. So I,” he lifts his free hand, the one that his omnitool had been illuminated on and the one not currently occupied by Herc’s hand, and waggles it back and forth slowly, “went looking for answers. And I think,” he swallows loudly, “I think I found them.”

Herc allows the silence to build for a moment before asking, “And?”

“And,” Yancy’s grip on his hand tightens before he shifts his shoulders, looking at Herc dead-on, “want to get married?”

“Yes.”

The word is out before Herc even thinks about it, the kernel of warmth exploding until it feels like it’s overflowing to fill every inch under his skin. His muscles contract without his say-so, and the next thing he knows his eyes are closed and he’s kissing Yancy. Not hard, but gently. Softly. _Lovingly_. Trying to convey every ounce of emotion he can through the action.

“ _Yes_ ,” he whispers when their mouths part, eyes still screwed shut, afraid opening them will break the moment, reveal it to be a dream. “Always yes, love.”

He can taste Yancy’s smile in the kiss Yancy leaves on his lips.

“Want to help me plan how we’re going to ask the others?”

This time, Herc laughs as the word tumbles out again.

 

———

 

“Well boss, we’re here,” Tendo leans back in his pilot chair, fingers weaving together behind his head as the _Sydney_ comes to a full stop. “As you can see,” he gestures to the displays floating above his controls with juts of his chin, “a whole lot of nothing. AIDNN isn’t picking up so much as a stray gravity wave, a pocket of dark energy, or even a _rock_ to make things interesting.”

“Keep scanning,” Herc uncrosses his arms from where they'd been bracketing his chest. Shifts from one foot to the other. From his place behind Tendo’s chair, he'd seen that they were alone as soon as they came out of FTL, but he'd hoped that the thirty two minutes of sublight to get to the exact coordinates would change that. “If anything within a light minute so much as _twitches_ our way, I want to know about it.”

243 hours. They’d picked up an extra ten hours or so after jumping to Acheron, making sure the anomaly countermeasures Mako and AIDNN had thrown together were working as well as could be expected.

Ten days.

They’d spent ten days getting here, only to find nothing.

God damn, but Herc _hates_ black ops.

An aching is building up beneath the bridge of Herc’s nose, spreading to somewhere behind his eyes, and he pinches at it, trying to push the impending headache away by sheer force of will. He doesn't miss how Yancy, at the comms station, rises at the gesture, his features a combination of inquiry, concern, and what Herc suspects is an attempt to look soothing. Herc nods to Yancy, giving tacit permission. Yancy smiles, then taps something on his omnitool, mouthing _‘Chuck’_ to Herc. Herc nods again, feeling something unclench, even if only slightly, in his chest.

Less than a minute later, the lift opens and Chuck joins Herc and Yancy. None of them say any words, but they don't need to. Chuck exchanges a glance with Yancy in Herc’s direction, and Herc can see something wordless pass between them before Chuck gently takes his hand. Yancy, ever the more subtle one, places a few finger just below Herc’s elbow, more inquiring than commanding.

“I’ll be in my bunk,” Herc announces, turning to leave the CIC, looking forward to the stabilizing effect contact with his boys always seems to have.

Which means, _of course_ , the overhead lights choose that moment to blink out and then flash to amber. The hum of the drive core under his feet shifts subtly, becoming less of a hum and more of a whisper. The whir of the air recyclers shifts cadence, becoming quieter yet somehow more insistent. The distant growl of the engines cuts off mid-rumble, barely perceptible except as a loss of a subsonic vibration that runs through every inch of the bulkheads.

All of these and a dozen other small signs are familiar to Herc.

They’re the indicators that they’ve gone silent. The _Sydney_ is now absorbing its own heat and other energy emissions, and their traditional engines have been replaced by their oversized Tantalus core going to work. They can’t contain their own light, of course, but in the vast distances of interstellar space, visual cues are significantly harder to pick up than other, broader sensor data like heat emissions.

“Choi? What’s going on?”

“Apologies, sir,” AIDNN’s disembodied voice comes from a console to Herc’s left before Tendo can speak. “I detected an active scan of our hull and engaged stealth systems. However, scans still show no other ships in the vicinity.”

Herc grunts. It makes sense. Follows protocol, even. Except—

“Disengage stealth systems and broadcast a hail in the clear.”

“Sir?” Tendo looks back at him, confusion clear, but his hands are already flipping over the controls, switching the heatsinks off and re-engaging their traditional thrusters. The techs will probably yell at him later about how the stealth system, ‘isn’t designed to be flipped on and off like some kind of light switch,’ but he’d rather not waste their precious minutes of stealth if they don’t need it.

“They already know we’re here.” Chuck sounds bored, like he's explaining something obvious to a five year old. “Hiding won’t solve anything.”

“What he means,” Yancy adds, “is that we can only maintain stealth for a few hours, and as soon as we go to FTL we’ll be visible again from the backscatter. Whoever this is, they were either already here, or they transitioned in without us noticing. Either way, their stealth system is probably a hell of a lot more powerful than our own. So,” he shakes his head, looking at Herc and shrugging, “they’ll see us long before we see them. Besides, they’ve probably already ID’d us. No need to hide anyway.”

Herc nods along. Sometimes, he swears it's like his boys can actually read his mind.

“General hail is away,” AIDNN reports. “No answer yet, sir, but either I or lieutenant Choi will notify you as soon as—”

“Two ships just appeared on close-range sensors,” Tendo interjects. “No incoming FTL light scatter, so they probably just disengaged stealth systems.” A pause as Tendo’s eyes track words scrolling across his screen. “Ladar identifies one as a modified _Normandy_ -class stealth frigate. The other...the computer is calling it a shuttle of some kind. As near as I can tell, a mix of Asari and Alliance shuttle with some Salarian gunship thrown in.”

He pauses, cocks his head to one side, then looks back at to Herc, Chuck, and Yancy.

“They’re responding to our hail. I think you'll want to hear this.”

He waits until Herc nods at him to turn back to his monitor and taps several buttons. A gentle, accented voice filters through the speakers, a roughness to it that not even the flattening from the comms can completely eliminate. Herc feels his spine stiffen at the same time Yancy sucks in a breath through his nose and Chuck makes a choking sound that he tries to cover up as him just clearing his throat. Before the message even reaches the speaker's name, Herc already knows who it is—all of them do, he's fairly certain. Suddenly, all the black-ops bullshit makes perfect sense.

“Attention _SSV Sydney_ , this is Spectre Kaidan Alenko, currently aboard the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance shuttle designation 2-4-Vessia. On behalf of myself and the _SSV Thermopylae_ , we request permission to board and discuss the next phase of your assignment. Spectre Alenko out.”

There's silence for all of three seconds before Yancy and Chuck speak at the same time.

“Was that really—”

“Did he fucking say the _Thermopylae_?”

After a moment’s consideration, Herc elects to answer Chuck’s question.

“Yes, I think he really fucking did.”

He glances at Chuck, and can't stop the sigh that fights it's way from between his lips.

“Let's go see what your uncle is doing running around with the second human Spectre.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, some vague semblance of a plot! :'O
> 
> Uneta'd, written 98% on my phone, and then posted with my glasses in the other room (instead of on my face where they belong) at 4 in the morning. Apologies for any errors.
> 
> (As usual in my outlines, I try to cram too much in at the end. There will be one more chapter and then the epilogue.)

To anyone else’s eyes, Herc thinks Scott might look confident—as if he's cocksure, comfortable, and treating the _Sydney_ as if it's his own ship instead of a foreign one. Scott has swagger, Herc will give him that, hands on his hips as he exits the docking tube, fingers barely brushing the handle of the pistol strapped to his side. And he has charisma: the little bugger’s smile can melt steel at a thousand yards. Hell, Scott can charm almost anyone into doing just about anything and still leave them thinking it'd been their idea all along.

To Herc, who’s known his little brother since the day the little shit was born, Scott is an obvious pile of nerves.

“Scott,” he nods by way of greeting, not quite able to quell the churning in his gut. “It’s been a while.”

“Has been a little bit, hasn’t it?” Scott’s smile is the same mask Herc had watched him learn years ago, back when their father used to ask how their day was at school. Back when anything other than ‘It was fine’ earned them something worse than their day had been. Herc knows it well. If he squints, though, he can see past the fake smile and read the real one underneath it like text on a notepad. His brother is...worried but hopeful is the only way Herc can think to describe it. “What, a year or two?”

“Closer to three years, actually.”

Herc is careful to keep his voice level—be sure it doesn't sound like he's accusing Scott of anything. He's well aware Scott’s brand of operations keep him in comms blackout for long chunks of time, so even something as simple as exchanging messages is an exercise in patience. And, while Herc is not necessarily the most patient man—really, it's Yancy and the twins who’ve taught him most of what he knows anything about being _still_ , about _waiting_ —Scott is even less so. Neither of them have kept up steady communication, and Herc isn't about to try to put his own responsibility for that on his brother.

That doesn't mean he misses the way Scott cringes inward, even if only slightly.

So he doesn't give Scott time to feel bad about it. Steps forward and envelops his brother in a hug, and Herc finds himself grateful Scott is in a standard uniform instead of armor. It takes Scott a moment to catch up, but Herc knows when he does by Scott’s arms wrapping under his shoulders.

“Missed you, Scotty,” he says, voice low enough that only they can hear.

“Missed you too, Le,” Scott practically whispers against his shoulder, voice slightly muffled. “God, it's been too long. I’m so so—”

“Hey, none of that,” Herc pulls back and gently pushes at his brother. “If the next word out of your mouth is ‘sorry’ I will fucking put you on the deck right here and now.”

Scott scoffs.

“You're welcome to try, old man.”

“Watch who you're calling old, old man,” Chuck chimes from his place behind Herc, and Herc feels a momentary pang as he remembers they aren’t alone—not really—but seeing Scott’s reaction makes it all worth it.

“Charlie? My god, look at you!”

Scott’s entire face seems to literally light up as he disengages from Herc and crosses over to Chuck in fewer than two heartbeats. He's got his arms around a disgruntled-looking Chuck and has literally lifted Herc’s son into the air in another one.

“You're so _big_! What've you been doing, working out in high G _every day_ since the last time I saw you? Jesus christ kiddo,” he lets a squawking Chuck down only to start prodding at the kid’s arms, “your fuckin’ biceps might even be bigger than your dad’s at this point. Might even be bigger than my fucking _leg_.”

Chuck is blushing, and Herc would be hard-pressed to say whether it's from the praise or being manhandled. Still, with the two of them side-by-side, it's incredibly apparent that Chuck is _Herc’s_ son. Chuck had inherited his square features, his wide shoulders. Where Chuck—and by extension, Herc—is broad, Scott is sharp. Where Chuck is bulky—as Scott had so helpfully pointed out, even more so than Herc—Scott is lean and compact. He still has the signature auburn hair they'd all inherited from Herc’s mother, but otherwise Herc looks more like their father while Scott resembles their mother.

(Herc would be lying if he said there aren't days he honestly despises his resemblance to Donovan Hansen. The asshole.)

“Shut _up_ , old man,” the heat in Chuck’s words is ruined by the way he continues to blush. “Don't you have someone else to terrorize?”

Herc braces himself for the whirlwind that will be Scott catching up with the Beckets and Gages, but the impending reunion is cut off by the heavy sounds of footfalls from the airlock.

In person, the second human Spectre is somehow more intimidating than Herc would’ve expected. Kaidan Alenko doesn't stand particularly tall—he's probably an inch or two shorter than Herc himself—but he carries an aura of _power_ with him that is so awe-inspiring Herc finds himself unable to think of it as anything other than unconscious. More than how the man carries himself, it's in an almost palpable tension in the air around him. It almost seems to say, _I stared down the barrel of the greatest evil in the galaxy. I walked through hell itself and clawed my way back. You do not frighten me._

He's also, a supremely unhelpful part of Herc’s mind points out, almost unfairly attractive. Though his temples may have begun to fade to gray, seemingly one strand at a time, it makes him look somehow even more attractive. More powerful.

Herc experiences a single, clear moment when he's not sure if the pressure curling in his gut is fear or arousal.

 _Probably,_ that unhelpful part of his mind continues, _both._

“Kaidan!”

Raleigh’s shout breaks Herc out of his own thoughts, and before he can even think to do anything, the kid’s biotically flung himself into Alenko. The other man catches Raleigh with ease, his own biotics flaring to steady them. His eyes dance as he laughs, returning Raleigh’s hug.

“Becket! They didn't tell me you'd be here. How’ve you been doing kid? How’s the brother?”

Raleigh pulls back only just far enough that he and Kaidan are face-to-face, still keeping his hands on the Spectre's shoulders. He's grinning widely, unreservedly, and tosses his head to indicate behind him where Yancy is standing with his hands in his pockets and a small smile creeping over his features.

“He's good. _We’re_ good. _Really_ good.”

Raleigh casts a meaningful glance over at Herc that he feels like something physical, especially once Alenko’s gaze follows it.

“I see.”

Raleigh nudges Kaidan with his elbow.

“Stop staring. I saw him first. Besides, you have your own.”

Herc feels his face heat, and is saved from everyone turning to stare at him by Yancy striding up to Raleigh, yanking his brother out of Alenko’s grip, and putting the kid in a headlock. Raleigh makes a sound of protest, but Herc’s seen the kid in close combat enough to know he could break it if he really wanted to.

“Speaking of,” Yancy’s tone is conversational, casual, as if he doesn't have his brother squirming beneath his arm, “how’s Shepard?”

Alenko grins at them. Props one of his hands on his hip.

“John is good. Enjoying retirement. Pissed you two went through Rio without him as your mentor, although,” he turns until he’s looking at Herc fully now, “I suppose that makes more sense now.”

Kaidan Alenko, second human Spectre, husband of the conqueror of the Reapers, steps towards Herc and extends his hand.

“A pleasure to finally meet you, Captain Hansen.”

Herc stares for perhaps half a second before he shakes himself and takes the offered grip.

“Likewise, sir.”

“I've read your file, Captain,” Alenko continues, but is cut off by Raleigh, the kid having finally wriggled his way free of Yancy’s hold to regard them with his arms crossed and hip cocked.

“Apparently not closely enough.”

Alenko rolls his eyes, a smile pulling at his lips, but otherwise acts as if Raleigh hadn't spoken.

“Very impressive work. You may not be subtle, but you get consistent results. And you're watching after a former student of mine,” his eyes twitch back to where Raleigh is standing, and suddenly the kid’s reaction makes so much more sense, “so I have to think you're also a good man.”

“I—thank you, sir,” Herc isn't sure what else to say. “He—both of them are very special to us.”

Alenko nods at him once, then nods again behind Herc, eyes assessing. Herc hears Bruce and Trevin shuffle. Can hear the rustle his brain can just _identify_ as Chuck moving to stand beside them.

“So I’ve gathered.”

“Apologies, sir,” Herc swallows and turns, gesturing at the twins and Chuck. They all stand a bit straighter. “These are Bruce and Trevin Gage, biotic and weaponry experts, and my son, Chuck Hansen. Chuck specializes in hacking, comms, and cryptology.”

“It's _cryptanalysis_ old man,” Chuck grouses, voice longsuffering as his face pinches into a frown. “Cryptology is writing bloody codes, not _solving_ them. Any moron with a stick can whack a keyboard to come up with a damn code.”

“Ah, sorry, _cryptanalysis_ ,” Herc lets his chagrin leak into his voice. Chuck doesn’t look mollified, but he can deal with that later. “Chuck and Trevin also come up with a bulk of the experimental tech we use.”

Alenko nods.

“It's a good team, captain. Very effective. Balanced. A good support system. And I have to say,” his voice takes on some deeper meaning, his gaze that much heavier, “even if I don't necessarily understand, I...approve. You all seem incredibly capable of looking out for one another.”

Herc swallows again. He's more than aware Alenko isn’t just talking about their status as a team.

“Thank you, sir. We do our best. Some days it's hard, but, at the end of the day, we’ve got each other’s backs, no matter what.”

There's a long pause during which none of them move. Herc could swear he doesn't even breathe. Then, almost so low he almost misses it,

“See that it stays that way.”

“Kaidan, _please_ ,” Raleigh snorts, breaks the moment, shatters the tension that'd been building like a rock hurtled into a house made of glass, “you're acting like _he’s_ the one capable of hurting _us_. I could kick Herc’s ass without breaking a sweat and he knows it.”

Herc feels the urge to scoff build in his throat, but carefully swallows it back and says nothing. The kid’s not _wrong_ , after all—all the best military training in the galaxy sums to ‘run and hide’ when facing a powerful biotic like Raleigh. Either that or ‘remove prior to engagement,’ which, really, is more Yancy’s area of expertise than Herc’s.

“That's not—” Alenko at least has the decency to look sheepish even as Raleigh cuts him off.

“I know, but we love one another. We care about one another. You don't have to give my boyfriend and CO the _shovel talk_ for christ’s sake.”

Raleigh’s words hang in the air, Herc watching the Spectre for any signs of...he’s not sure what. By all accounts, Kaidan Alenko is a good man—honorable, even. Reports claim he’s kind, self-sacrificing, determined, empathetic—the list of positive traits goes on and on. On some level, Herc feels he probably shouldn’t be worried, but that feeling is nearly overridden by the sheer _legend_ of the man. Because the one thing the reports all fail to leave out is that Kaidan Alenko is _powerful_ , both in the personal sense and the larger one. And power, Herc is more than aware, can change a man. Alenko might view the Beckets both as children, students, or proteges— _something_ —but that doesn’t mean he’ll sit there and let himself be admonished.

Before Herc has enough time to even properly worry about it, the sound of Scott’s laughter breaks the silence. Out of the corner of his eye, Herc can see all eyes turn toward his brother.

“Jesus _christ_ ,” he wipes at an imaginary tear, his shoulders still shaking, “you never could just do things the easy way, could you Le? This mission is going to be bloody interesting.”

To Herc’s surprise, Alenko’s face breaks out into a grin, and he laughs along with Scott. Whatever tension might’ve been building in Herc’s shoulders evaporates like fog burnt away by the sun. Right—a _good_ man.

“You have no idea, Captain Hansen. Also, Captain—” he turns to Herc, and his smile twists a bit, but not unhappily or angrily, “Captain Hercules? I’m sorry, having two Captain Hansens is throwing me a bit—”

“Call me Herc, mate,” Herc feels his lips pulling themselves up at the corners, mirth dancing low in his stomach, “everyone else does.”

“Oi, maybe at your _funeral_ I will,” Scott pipes up, but Herc waves him away.

“Everyone _except_ my brother. But he can’t let go of a childhood nickname because he’s an idiot.”

“Damn ri— _hey_.”

“Alright, Herc it is,” Alenko’s smile is making his eyes crinkle at the corners, “but only if you and your crew call me Kaidan. ‘Spectre Alenko’ has always been way too formal for my tastes.”

“I’ll try, sir, but no promises.”

“So, _Kaidan_ ,” Raleigh butts in, grinning like the shit-head he is, “what’s this super-secret fancy mission you’ve brought us?”

 

———

 

The _Sydney_ ’s conference room is made to fit at least fifteen people comfortably, just in case they have dignitaries on board for whatever reason. Possibly for that same reason, the room is near the _Sydney_ ’s center of mass, though one of the long walls is almost entirely devoted to a viewscreen linked up to one of the external cameras. Though the room is large, even by ship standards, the unending black extending from one side makes it seem somehow even larger.

With just Herc, Scott, and Kaidan there, it feels downright cavernous.

Raleigh, Yancy, and Chuck had all insisted they be present, but before Herc had even tried to talk them down, Kaidan had interceded with a soft, apologetic, “Orders,” that not even they could argue against. Bruce and Trevin hadn’t put up a fight—had probably been expecting it, knowing them—though Herc is about ninety percent certain they’re going to be leading the charge to grill him afterward.

Herc has ceded his usual spot at the head of the table to Kaidan, and is instead sitting with his back to the screen-wall. Scott is across from him, the jokester gone, instead replaced by a trim and professional man Herc scarcely recognizes. They see one another so rarely nowadays outside of holidays—if at all, really—that Herc realizes that this side of Scott is new to him. For some reason, that makes something cold, almost like dread, well up in his stomach. He makes yet another mental promise to do better about keeping in touch with Scotty. After the shit he and his brother have survived together, they owe it to one another, he figures.

Alenko’s omnitool springs to life around his arm, holographics painting his face a faint orange-yellow, and then the table holos spring to life. Standing a few centimeters above the table’s surface is a scaled-down replica of Stacker Pentecost, humanity’s voice on the Citadel Council in the years since Donnel Udina’s failed coup during the Reaper War. He’s also an old friend of Herc’s—XO on one of his first posts, the _Hong Kong_.

He’s not sure why seeing Stacker surprises him. After all, Alenko _is_ a Spectre, and he reports directly to the Council, so it makes sense that a Council member would be involved. That it’s Stacker and not one of the others, well. Herc isn’t sure what he expected, especially since the Alliance is involved. The one thing that _doesn’t_ surprise him is how Stacker is standing at attention, his hands clasped neatly behind him as if he’s speaking to a room full of other admirals.

Kaidan pushes another button on his omnitool, and the projection starts speaking.

“Herc, Scott, I hope this message finds you well. I have entrusted it to Spectre Alenko,” Herc doesn't miss the way Kaidan rolls his eyes at the use of his full title, “and I trust him to get it to you safely and securely. I have also forwarded a request to the Alliance to establish a secure meeting site. I hope they didn’t give you too much trouble.”

Stacker shifts even as he smiles at his own joke, and he looks down for a moment as his holographic feet shuffle over whatever they’re standing on. _Of course_ the Alliance had been as subtle as a hammerblow to the head about the whole thing, and Stacker had known full-well they would be.

“I send this to you as both your friend and a representative of the Council. So, with that in mind, allow me to be the first to offer you both congratulations.”

Herc blinks at the holo, a suspicion worming its way into his gut, and he glances over at Scott to find his brother’s eyes widening. Good. He’s not the only one thinking it.

“You’re both being considered as candidates for the Spectres.”

“Holy fucking shit,” Scott breathes. Herc has to agree. There’s something hot in his chest, cutting off his throat, so he nods instead. To whom, he's not sure, but it feels necessary.

“I don't need to tell you what a monumental achievement this is,” the recording of Stacker continues. “This represents a huge step forward, both for the two of you, and for humanity. You've both, of course, been chosen for separate reasons. Herc, for your leadership and ability to work impossible situations, and Scott for your subterfuge and stealth skills. I'm even told,” Stacker’s mouth twists into a small smile as something that sounds a lot like pride creeps into his voice, “that STG personally made the request for your candidacy, Scott, to the Salarian Councilor herself. Of course, keep in mind, this is only candidacy, not admission. The final decision will be made based on Spectre Alenko’s report on the mission we have for you.”

The holo moves, one arm reaching out fingers to press seemingly-invisible buttons, and Stacker is replaced instead by the model of a star system. Herc hears Scott mutter a soft, “Here we go,” as the details of the system are listed off as floating text above the projection.

“This is the Elysta star system, in the Ismar Frontier.”

Stacker’s voice is as solid as ever, even without a physical manifestation of his presence. Herc can almost imagine him still standing at attention as he delivers the report, never mind that his image isn’t being recorded.

“The Alliance has determined that a former special operative, one who has worked closely with the Council in the past, has defected and taken up criminal activities based out of this system. So far, we have confirmed that he is engaging in piracy, and we suspect trafficking as well. As near as we can tell, he is operating out of a station built around Hesano, one of the local gas giants.”

Herc finds himself nodding along with the briefing as a small, green light illuminates on top of the indicated planet before the holo zooms in to list more specifics. Still, a small voice at the back of his mind is questioning why this mission is being treated with such secrecy. Sure, Spectre nominations are a big deal—an _honor_ —but from what Herc’s heard, these kinds of assessment missions are usually much higher-priority than simple piracy. Also, this problem sounds like something the Alliance could easily send in a small fleet to mop up with no fuss.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to wait long for the other shoe to drop.

“The wrinkle,” Stacker reappears, his mouth twisting itself into an apologetic frown, “is this. The man you’re after is named Newton Geiszler.” A picture pops up beside Stacker’s torso, information scrolling beneath it. “Specialist Geiszler was an expert in stealth, nano-, and biotechnology, and was recruited by the Alliance and Council to work on prototype spacecraft. Just over four months ago, he disappeared from his post after extended contact with known criminal elements. We believe,” Stacker coughs, “that he may have been seduced by a crime lord. And I wish I were speaking figuratively, gentlemen.”

Stacker’s face pinches, and Herc can’t help but chuckle to himself at the man’s discomfort. Hears Scott mirror the sound, both of their eyes catching over the table.

“For a time,” the holo interrupts their moment, “nothing. Then, five days ago, a Council listening post intercepted a distress signal from a Hanar freighter that reported it was being attacked by a ship that came out of nowhere.” Stacker stares at the camera for a moment before adding, “A _stealth_ ship, gentlemen. One that dropped from FTL with almost no detectable backscatter.”

“Holy _fucking_ shit,” Scott doesn’t so much breathe the words as half-speak, half-shout them this time. Yet again, Herc has to agree. Distantly, he’s aware that he’s swearing under his breath.

Ships with stealth capability are incredibly difficult to manufacture, with almost no one except the Alliance and other collective governments able to finance, let alone _build_ one. Maybe a billionaire with nothing better to do than blow most of their fortune on a highly skilled work crew tasked with building a small frigate could _try_. But even then, many of the components necessary for a stealth ship to ultimately function properly are classified or only produced by military R &D labs.

That this Geiszler and whoever he’d run off with have working stealth ships is bad enough. Even then, any stealth ship that isn’t somewhere near the bleeding edge won’t be able to hide the massive surge of background radiation and charged particles that are released from a ship’s hull when exiting FTL. That these ships can do just that means they're _damn good_ stealth ships. Practically military-grade. On par with Scott’s ship, the _Thermopylae_. And that means they’re getting their information and parts from somewhere. Somewhere like the Alliance or the Council, both of which Geiszler had worked for on special projects.

“I’m sure you can imagine the gravity of this situation,” Stacker hadn't accounted for giving them more than a moment to process in his message. “If word of this gets out, every pirate and smuggler will either flock to Geiszler’s side or launch an assault on his base to steal what he has. Not to mention how the Batarians would take it, and, well...”

Stacker trails off, sighs, and rubs his face with one hand. For a single moment, Herc can see just how _tired_ his old friend is.

“It'd be a goddamn mess. Thus far, the Council has managed to keep things quiet, but the scale of the attacks appears to be increasing. Your orders,” Stacker takes a breath as his face hardens, “are to take Geiszler down by whatever means necessary. Alive if possible, but dead if it comes to that. You are to eliminate any stealth ships he may have built, again by whatever means necessary. Dismantle them, peacefully if possible, though more likely you'll need a more _forceful_ approach. Finally, you are to infiltrate the base and download a copy of all their data so we may determine the nature of any Alliance or Council security deficits. Once that’s complete, eliminate the base.”

“Oh, is that all?”

Herc’s half-surprised to find it'd been him to speak. Scott is giving him an approving look. Damn. Not thirty minutes and already his brother is rubbing off on him.

“I’ve included a copy of our latest long-range scans as well as all salvaged telemetry data from the piracy attacks with this message.” Stacker disappears again, but is replaced for only the briefest moments by a zoomed-in scan of the gas giant showing the likely locations and configurations of a small fleet of ships surrounding it. “It goes without saying that this information is considered top secret. I understand that some information will be necessary to share with your crews to prepare them for what they're about to face. However, you are hereby ordered to keep disclosure of classified information to an operational minimum. Herc,” Stacker’s voice turns gentle, “obviously i don't expect you to lie to them. But please be careful.”

Herc feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He and the twins had been just starting their relationship when he and Stacker had gotten to know each other, so it’s not like Stacker doesn’t know Herc’s love life is unconventional. On top of that, he has a sneaking suspicion Stacker knows about the others. He’d never said as much outright, but when they’d visited on the Citadel a year or two back, Raleigh and Yancy especially hadn’t exactly been subtle—not that Herc would ever ask them to.

“Good luck, gentlemen,” the projection of Stacker smiles wryly. “I look forward to hearing of your success in the days ahead.”

And, without any further fanfare, the message ends. Alenko— _Kaidan_ , Herc forces his mind to think, since after all they _did_ make a deal—is grinning at them.

“Well, congratulations to both of you. I, for one, would gladly welcome you both into the Spectres.”

“Yeah, all we’ve gotta do is take out an entire fleet and infiltrate a hostile base, just the two of us,” Scott gripes. “Do they actually expect us to do all of that?”

Kaidan shrugs with a single shoulder.

“Who knows? Remember, John basically failed _his_ mission when Nihilus was observing him for final approval. And he still became the first human Spectre.”

“To be fair,” Herc adds, “that was because a Reaper stopped him.”

“Well, I mean,” Kaidan’s smile twists a bit to one side, “yeah, sure, there was that. But still—”

“But this time,” Herc continues, “the consequences of failure seem to be a little more dire than losing some Prothean tech.”

“True,” Kaidan nods his head to Herc, a glimmer in his eye, “but this time, you have me. John and the rest of the _Normany_ ’s crew, myself included, got pretty used to flying into seemingly impossible situations with just one ship. This time, there are two of you. And both of your ships are _far_ better-equipped than the _Normandy_ ever was. And better-armed.”

His grin is wolfish.

“Here’s the plan I’ve come up with so far. Feel free to jump in at any time.”

 

———

 

It’s another five-day run to Elysta.

Five days with nothing to do but prepare and come to terms with the fact that they’ve been sent on what amounts to a suicide run. But, if they pull it off, he might become a Spectre. An elite member of the Council’s Special Tactics and Reconnaissance unit.

Five days to iron out Kaidan’s rough idea of a plan that basically has the _Sydney_ run in, gun’s blazing, while Scott and Kaidan use the _Termopylae_ to get in close. Then, using her as a second distraction, they take the _Vessia_ —the Spectre’s shuttle/stealth fighter hybrid with as much firepower as a standard Alliance frigate—straight into the base without anyone noticing in the chaos.

Five days that somehow feels like too much time and not nearly enough.

On day two, all five of Herc’s boyfriends—fiances, at this point?—practically jump him during his sleep shift and drag him to bed. It _probably_ has something to do with Chuck catching him awake six hours into his sleep shift the previous day, still working at his desk, but he can’t be certain.

“I’m not bloody _tired_ —” he starts, but cuts himself off with a strangled moan when Chuck yanks down his pants and Raleigh and Yancy both put their mouths to good use. He tries to prop himself up on his elbows, but tingling blue energy surrounds his torso, lifting him enough to allow Bruce and Trevin to both slip behind him, their arms settling around him.

“Peace, love,” Trevin whispers in his left ear, tracing the shell of cartilage with his tongue.

“Let them have their fun,” Bruce continues on his right, voice ghosting over Herc’s skin.

“And let us—”

“Make you—”

“Feel so—”

“ _So_ —”

“Good.”

Herc’s will to protest had been almost gone already, but the two of them taking turns ravaging his mouth effectively cuts it off at the root. That and the feeling of a mouth joining in somewhere on his thigh, sucking a bruise into the skin just below the v of his hips. Chuck, then, joining in with the Beckets.

Needless to say, the five of them are _relentless_ in exhausting him to the point of passing out.

 

———

 

“Look, I’m not saying it’s a _bad_ plan, I’m just saying I don’t like us being the goddamn bait.”

Chuck’s tone is conversational, at least for him, and is interspersed with the near-subsonic hum that comes from being in the same room as the drive core. Herc flashes signals to the contingent of marines he’s leading through the simulation, and switches his comm mic over to the private channel he, Chuck, the Beckets, and the Gages share. The only other person with access is AIDNN—so, _person_ is a somewhat loose term here—and that’s more since AIDNN’s presence ensures no unauthorized access. Besides which, Herc trusts AIDNN. They all do.

“I have to agree with Chuck,” Raleigh says, grunting between words. If Herc remembers correctly, Raleigh is in the gym, still trying to build up his biotic endurance. “And you all know how much I _love_ agreeing with Chuck.”

“Get stuffed, Becket.”

“Only if you and Yancy do it together later tonight.”

“Rals,” Yancy’s voice is cut off by a muted _crack_ that Herc hears through his own helmet speakers from somewhere else in the simulation, “maybe save the distracting visuals for when Herc and I aren’t in a sim? Especially,” another crack, this one followed by a warble somewhere in the distance, “when we _aren’t alone_?”

Herc grunts but otherwise doesn’t respond—though he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel his dick jump in his armor at Raleigh’s words. Signals three marines around the corner before following, three others watching their backs as the rest of the team trickles around and down the slate gray metal hallways. There’s a hail of gunfire from ahead of them, but the three marines taking point—one of them is Dunbar, he remembers, and yet again reminds himself to talk to the rest of the team about her upcoming birthday—quickly put them down with the kind of swift efficiency trained into them. The continue moving forward, stepping over the bodies of the guards the sim had added based on the data Kaidan had brought. Herc notes that their gear is surprisingly good for pirates, then reminds himself that these pirates are supposedly getting top-shelf armor, weapons, and tech from Geiszler.

Underestimating them will likely be the fastest way to get his crew killed.

Herc’s HUD tells him that Yancy’s signal is getting closer, though it’s not until the kid decloaks right next to him that Herc realizes exactly _how_ close. He chins back to the general team channel.

“Status?”

“Clear for now,” Yancy reports, broadcasting so everyone in the team can hear it as he walks beside Herc. His rifle is almost as long as he is tall, and Herc could almost imagine he can hear the servos in Yancy’s armor laboring to correct for the obvious imbalance. “There were a few stragglers trying to double back behind us, but I dealt with them.”

In his left ear, Herc can hear Chuck continue his tirade.

“All I’m saying is, we can take a beating, sure. Can give one back, too, if it comes to that. But against more than a dozen ships? We’d be fucked twenty different ways. Even if we focused all drive power on barriers,” there’s a rattling as Chuck grunts, and Herc guesses he’s working on something and talking at the same time, “and diverted the power from the MACs to boost the GARDIAN system—”

“Do _not_ mess with the GARDIAN,” Bruce chimes in, “I had to replace _half_ the lenses after the last fight we got in, Chuck. This isn’t a standard—”

“I _know_ it’s not standard, you drongo,” Chuck interrupts. Herc makes sure to mute his mic before he sighs explosively into his helmet. “I _know_ that our blue-green system breaks down more easily than a standard IR system, but we also get better coherency. Meaning we can dump more power into the beam and increase—”

“The effective range is already just over six times that of an IR system,” Bruce argues back, “the most you could do would be, _maybe_ , boosting that to seven times. And then, _then_ , you’d blow every circuit, melt every lens, and shatter every mirror we have within ten seconds. If you want to replace all that on your own, be my guest, because I can guarantee you Mako won’t help.”

“Well then what do you suggest, _oh wise one_?”

“Overclocking the main hy-mag cooling system,” Bruce answers immediately.

Herc hears a shout that it takes him a split-second to realize is from his own external mics, and he looks up to see a pirate lining up a shot of his team down a side hall. He doesn’t even give himself time to think, just swivels his rifle and pulls the trigger, his adrenaline singing. The rifle in his hands bucks, vibrates, and the man gets off a single shot that goes wide before Herc sees his own slugs pierce the pirate’s leg armor near the seam of the thigh. The pirate goes down screaming. It takes Herc’s own team another heartbeat to find their own aim, and one of the marines at his back puts a single round neatly through the center of the pirate’s helmet when the man writhes into view.

The entire thing takes maybe three seconds. He can feel his pulse thrumming under his skin, and it’s only then that Herc realizes he’s swearing under his breath. Probably a good thing that he has his mic muted.

“—creased firing rate of our biggest weapon is worth far more than a few dozen kilometers of short-range defense,” Bruce is still speaking, unaware. Herc allows himself to listen in again, forcing his breathing to be steady, and continues with his team. “The file says they’re mostly frigate-sized, so if we can take them out before they even get within close range—”

“Are you still following this?” Yancy’s icon switches to indicate it’s a private channel with just the two of them. “I swear, with these two it’s half tech jargon, half bickering.”

“Be nice,” Herc admonishes with a soft laugh, chinning the channel closed. Behind Yancy’s faceplate, he can see his boy’s eyes rolling.

“Whatever,” Chuck cuts off whatever Bruce might’ve been saying, “we’re getting off the point. The _point_ is that, even if we played fancy with our power allocations, a dozen or more ships is still _too fucking much_.”

“But we’re not alone,” this time it’s Yancy who’s speaking, and Herc glances over to see him still monitoring their six as their team advances, “we have Scott’s ship. She’s got some fancy gear, too, don’t forget.”

“Agreed. I mean, it has two frigate-scaled Thanix cannons, sure,” after so long using Chuck and Bruce’s shorthand, it takes Herc a split-second to remember that most of the galaxy—apparently Trevin included—refers to magnetic hydrodynamic cannons by their original manufacturing name, “but those new Gorgon cannons look like they could dish out some serious punishment.”

Herc blinks, trying to recall the _Thermopylae_ ’s specs, and opens his mouth to speak in the same moment that Raleigh does.

“What’s—” he grunts with exertion, “what’s a Gorgon?”

“Mythological creature,” Yancy immediately answers. “Y’know, Rals, Medusa? Could petrify and kill her targets with a single look? I thought you went to school, kiddo.”

Herc can see Yancy’s shit-eating grin when the kid glances back at him, and he’s about to give him a solid whack on the back of the head when there’s a telltale flicker on his status monitor. Specifically, on his proximity sensors, almost as if they’d been on the verge of registering a threat but had thought better of it. It’s a _familiar_ flicker, and Herc recognizes it as the kind made by—

“Infiltrators,” he barks over the team comm, forgetting to mute his mic to their family channel and accidentally broadcasting to both but unable to find a split-second to care, “form up and—”

He swears loudly as there’s a flash of blue-white light a scant half-meter in front of his face, and then a spray of something wet splatters all over his visor. Something wet and red. Herc barely represses the urge to jump back, and instead uses the hand not currently keeping a finger on the trigger of his gun to wipe away the blood.

An armored figure stands between him and Yancy, body still shimmering into view as the armor’s active camouflage releases. The IFF signature might be blank, but Herc easily enough recognizes his brother’s gait and slim build even under the bulk of the suit. Scott flicks the monomolecular blade he has in one hand, any blood that’d been left on it sliding off like it’d never been there. The same blood that’d come from the pirate who’d apparently been cloaked and literal feet from murdering Herc—well, murdering him as best as the sims will allow—and is now lying on the floor without a head.

They might just be simulations, but the flash of panic had been real enough. Herc breathes deep though his nose, though, and pushes the flash of unpleasant cold back down with practiced ease.

His marines react about the way he’d expect them to if an unknown combatant just materialized in their midst. Before Scott’s finished sheathing his sword in the specialized holster on his back, he has at least five gun barrels of various shapes and sizes pointed at him. One of them, Herc notes, is Yancy’s sniper rifle. He takes another breath, then waves his hand in a soothing gesture, and the barrels drop like puppets with their strings cut, Yancy’s the last to fall.

“Thanks, Scott,” Herc says after a few moments of tense silence, only speaking once he trusts his voice again. “Didn’t realize you were in here with us.”

Scott laughs—banishing any doubt it’d been anyone else—and shrugs.

“I figure if I’m gonna be leading the actual infiltration mission, might as well join the infiltration team in exercises.”

Herc grunts wordlessly.

“Wouldn't it better to train with your own team?”

Leave it to Yancy to ask the smart questions. Scott’s faceplate turns towards Yancy, though Herc can't see his brother's expression behind the matte tactical coating.

“I do, but they don't need more practice. They're almost as good as I am.”

Scott’s helmet twitches minutely, like he's chinning a control in his helmet, before his voice comes through again.

“Also, be nice to your brother, Yancy.”

There's a beat of stunned silence before Chuck and Trevin’s voices speak at the same time.

“Is that Scott—?”

“Is _Uncle Scott_ —you _fucking_ —” Chuck’s voice wins out, though he cuts himself off, “did you _hack_ our fucking _private channel_? AIDNN?”

“It does indeed appear that Captain Hansen was able to gain access,” AIDNN confirms cooly, though Herc could almost swear he hears a note of frustration buried in the synthetic tones. “I am currently unable to pinpoint the moment he gained access, as none of my monitoring or encryption protocols appear to have been compromised.”

There's another stunned silence before Chuck blurts, “You hacked our _AI_?”

“No, I hacked your _channel_ ,” Herc can practically hear his brother rolling his eyes, “very sneakily. I can't hack a bloody AI. Wouldn't even if I could.”

“And for that, I am eternally grateful.”

AIDNN sounds as close to sarcastic as Herc’s ever heard him. God damn, but exposure to Scott seems to be rubbing off on all of them.

“But anyway, you all were discussing my ship,” Scott strides forward in the corridors, taking point and making universal hand signs to follow. Herc’s soldiers look to him and, at his signaled assent, they hurry to keep up with Scott.

“If you lot have something you want to know, just ask. After all, you're all my brother’s,” Scott trails off for a moment before, “significant others?”

“We’ve never really defined it,” Yancy admits, and Herc could swear he feels Yancy’s armored gauntlet make contact with his arm, but he can't be sure. “Not until more recently, but that works I suppose.”

“Either way,” Scott freezes in his place in the corridor, lifting a fist and bringing their column of marines to halt, “the point is that you all,” a pistol appears in Scott’s hands from somewhere, larger than any Herc’s seen before. Its muzzle flashes twice, silently. “You all are like family. If you have questions, I'll answer them.”

“Some of us _are_ your goddamn family,” Chuck grumbles over the comm. Herc finds himself chuckling at the same time as Scott, hears the others joining in.

“Don't think I've forgotten that, Charlie.”

“It's _Chuck_.”

“Whatever you say,” Scott beckons the team down the corridor, the shit-eating grin Herc can hear in his voice practically painted over his faceplate, “ _Charlie_.”

“Fuck you, I’m fucking _glad_ you turned me down when I—”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Scott’s deflection is obvious, at least to Herc. and _oh_ they will be talking about this later...probably, “you lot were asking about the Gorgon. I dunno _how_ it works, exactly, but my techs tell me it's just like one of the Geth’s Spitfires—”

“Hold up a _fucking_ second,” there's a clank of impact as Chuck starts speaking, and he grunts but carries on, “you mean to tell me they managed to replicate the toroid superconductors on a _ship_ scale weapon?”

“I have no bloody clue what you just said, but I'm gonna assume yes.”

“Care to educate the rest of the class?” There's no background noise wherever Trevin is, so probably a cabin—probably Herc’s instead of the crew quarters.

“Basically—” Chuck begins, and Herc feels himself roll his eyes because that means it's going to be anything but. The team moves past a pair of bodies that Herc notes have both been taken out with single, neat shots to the head. Whatever Scott’s pistol is, it packs a goddamn wallop.

“It shoots metal that becomes on-demand, super-charged plasma when it hits something,” Bruce interrupts Chuck, his voice echoing slightly through Trevin’s connection. They must be in the same room, then. “ _Basically_ , it shreds anything it hits. Shields, armor, superstructure. None of them can really withstand having a miniature sun dropped on top of them a couple dozen times a second.”

“ _Basically_ ,” Scott almost perfectly mimics Chuck’s tone and cadence with the word, and Herc hears Chuck huff, “it tears shit apart at close range. Even more effectively than warp torpedoes, since those aren’t as effective at taking down barriers. So if the _Thermopylae_ can get within range of any of their ships, it won't stay intact long.”

“The thing I don't get,” Bruce cuts back in on the connection, “is how do you _power_ something that big? The handheld versions had power packs so big you couldn't carry them in standard G without some kind of strength-augmenting powered armor. A ship-size version…”

Chuck answers with something, but Herc tunes it out. The two of them will probably be talking about this for at least the next ten minutes. Yancy strides up beside him, and Herc sees their own private comm channel open again on his HUD.

“Want to leave the kids with Scott for now?”

“Don’t call them kids, Yance,” Herc feels his brows crease, “some of them are older than you. And, why? Did you have something else in mind?”

“Well,” Yancy’s voice changes somehow, sounds almost like it skips a beat, though nothing about his posture changes, “we might all die in two days.”

“Or we might all be goddamn heroes.”

“Been there, done that. I just...”

The sigh that filters over the comm sounds tired. Weary in a way Herc feels Yancy shouldn’t be.

“You don’t want to regret anything?” he asks into the silence.

“I..." Yancy sounds like he does when he’s coming down from a mission, emotions spilling over. Herc doesn’t need him to say anything else. He keys back to the private channel with the six of them—well, seven with Scott.

“Scott, take over,” he trusts his brother to hear the implied _please_ in the words, and makes sure it doesn’t sound like an order—not that he could order Scott around even if he wanted to. “The rest of you, give me an ETA.”

 

———

 

By the time Herc and Yancy methodically remove their armor, change into their uniforms, and make it to Herc’s quarters, the others are already there. Herc has his hand in the small of Yancy’s back, keeping the pressure of his touch gentle but constant. The twins’ legs are tangled on the bed, the two of them reading something on a tablet that Trevin’s holding. Chuck and Raleigh are on the couch, playing some kind of game on their omnitools. All of them look up when the door opens with a soft, pneumatic hiss.

None of them say anything. None of them have to.

Herc guides Yancy to the bed, Raleigh meeting them on the way while Chuck joins the twins. Working together, the five of them get Yancy out of his uniform, down to his underwear. Each of them let their lips linger on each new inch of skin as it’s exposed, their breath drawing out shudders and gooseflesh in their wake. As they go, Herc notices the others are also getting down to their own underwear, too, and peels off his own uniform once the twins have both enveloped Yancy like an octopus. Raleigh has somehow managed to wriggle his way underneath his brother, so that Yancy’s head is resting on the expanse of the kid’s chest. Chuck hovers over them all, his lips chasing after the sensitive spots they all know Yancy has on his neck.

Herc crawls in beside them all, the heat under the sheets nearly overwhelming despite how thin the synthetic material is. Yancy makes a soft whimpering noise, and Herc slides up and over where Trevin has his arm wrapped around their boy’s shoulders to press his forehead to Yancy’s.

“I know, sweetheart,” he whispers, “I know. I feel it too.”

Yancy’s eyes flick up to him, slide shut, then slit open again. Herc can see the shine of tears in their corners, and he leans forward to kiss them away.

“We’re here, sweetheart,” he says, Yancy making a soft sound with each press of his lips. “We’re here. We’ve got you.”

When Yancy lets go, it’s not in the form of sobs, tears, or even sniffles. Instead, he begins trembling—not violently, but steadily nonetheless. It doesn't have the spasmodic rhythm to it of sobs, instead reminds Herc uncomfortably of the cool, constant shivers brought on by fear.

In answer, they pull Yancy closer, all five of them contributing in some small way to hold him steady. To keep him secure, anchored. They take turns adorning his skin with reassurances, chasing the tremors away with their hands and lips and soft words. Their fingertips trace nonsense patterns around Yancy’s collarbone, his belly button, his arms and chest.

Every now and then, Yancy’s trembling will intensify. He won't so much _make_ noise as _leak_ it, a faint whine deep in his chest that seems to be more forcing its way out than intentionally given voice. Their soft murmurs rise in answer, their grips remaining secure. They do not let him shake away, and they do not let him fall further into himself. They keep him in the present with the heat of their skin on his, their breath, their words.

Their near-nudity is not sexual, but a necessity. Yancy's skin can't seem to decide if it's cold or feverish. They freely give him the feel of their bodies, the cocoon of their flesh and warmth, to act as a kind of anchor. To keep Yancy in the now, in the _real_ and not in the _what if_.

Time begins to blur at the edges.

Herc somehow finds himself switching with Raleigh, becoming the bedrock of their little formation.

At some point, Yancy starts hiccuping, growing after each sudden jerk of his body. Each one draws a low chuckle out of Raleigh, and Herc watches as he kisses Yancy’s cheeks each time.

Yancy’s shaking gets particularly bad from one moment to the next, but, before Herc can do anything, a blue-white light envelops them all. His skin tingles, his stomach dropping. With a glance around, he realizes the twins are levitating them off the bed. That the humming beating a gentle rhythm against his skin is the unceasing caress of their minds holding them all aloft in a zero-g field. The effect is immediate, with Yancy's limbs almost completely stilling. Eventually, the strain wears on the twins—after all, the six of them together comprise a rather substantial chunk of mass—and they all float laconically back to the bed.

Herc isn't aware of the exact moment Yancy calms, too focused on the feel of Yancy’s skin under his hands—on following meaningless nonsense patterns that avoid the transition into the erotic. All he knows is that one moment Yancy is shaking like a leaf, and the next he's not. He somehow manages to roll himself over so he's facing Herc beneath him. It makes Raleigh and Chuck both grumble softly, but they quiet after a moment of adjusting.

“Thank you,” Yancy mumbles into Herc’s chest. His voice is slow, thick. Almost like when one of them has drawn a pair of orgasms out of him. He leans his head down to Herc’s until their foreheads are touching, noses bumping, a mirror of Herc’s earlier position.

“Any time,” Herc whispers back, hears the others make small noises of agreement. “Any time at all. We’ve got you.”

Whatever Yancy might've been about to say is lost in an incoherent stream of soft sounds that ends in a deep exhalation. His head droops forward and to the side, cheek sliding over Herc’s, and his next breath sounds suspiciously like a snore.

Herc doesn't dare move. He can practically feel the others’ smiles without looking.

“Get comfortable, boys,” he says as low as he can manage. “I have a feeling we might be here a while.”

Though they rearrange slightly, in the end, Herc makes sure each of them is making contact with Yancy in some way. The twins are the first to drop off, their breathing evening out almost in tandem. Chuck is next, having wrapped himself around Bruce, but his arm reaching forward to take a firm grip on Yancy’s hip. Raleigh is last, shifting and shuffling behind Trevin, his arm wedged under Trevin’s head like a pillow.

As the sounds of sleep envelop him, Herc quietly orders the cabin lights to extinguish themselves from their barely-lit state. The darkness that envelops his cabin is deep, but not absolute. The viewport looking to the outside allows in the faintest trickle of illumination, flashing in smudgy, irregular patterns as the ship catches up to the light in its path. He considers asking the computer to close the window’s iris, but decides against it.

In the faint, shifting werelight, the hum of the ship a distant echo, he can let himself become immersed fully in the sensations of the men around him. Their heat. The snuffing sounds they make. The gentle but insistent thrum of their heartbeats against his skin. He relishes these moments. These times when, under the stars, he feels more aware of _them_ as a whole. Of the connection they all share, born of years of trust and hardship and love.

It's in these starlight hours, these small moments—these little _wonders_ —that he feels like he truly understands what it is to be one with these men he loves. What it is to love.

He closes his eyes, and lets himself fall asleep to the sounds of his universe at peace.

 

———

 

“I _still_ don’t like this.”

Chuck’s armor makes his head look slightly smaller than it should be without his helmet on. Herc will never admit to thinking of him as _adorable_ like this, but that doesn't mean he can't think it. Especially when Chuck is pouting like that.

“ _You_ don't like it?” Bruce’s arms are crossed where he's standing beside Herc, his expression tight and unreadable. “You think we _like_ having to watch you four be shuttled off to another ship?”

Chuck glares at Bruce, then turns the full force of his ire towards Herc. After a pause, Herc raises a questioning eyebrow, fighting to keep his expression neutral.

“What, sprog?”

“Nothing to say, old man?”

Herc shrugs with a single shoulder, not entirely sure what he wants the motion to actually mean. Remains silent, though he does feel his lips drawing themselves into a thin-pressed line.

Beside him, Bruce fidgets, then mutters a low, “Fuck it,” and crosses the airlock, booted steps heavy. Reaches Trevin first, and pulls his twin into a fierce hug. When they part, Herc almost misses the short, near-desperate press of lips, but he can clearly hear Bruce whisper, “Come back to us.”

Bruce repeats the process for Chuck, Raleigh, and Yancy in turn, getting promises out of all four of them. Once Bruce is back beside him, Herc stiffens and snaps off a quick salute.

“Keep each other safe,” he manages to say. Wants to add more, things like _don't take risks_ and _you are so much more important to me than a mission, the Alliance, or the Council_. But those things will only impede their success, and as much as might mean them if he were to say them, he _can’t_ mean them. He doesn't have that luxury.

“Keep our home safe,” Yancy responds. His voice sounds thick.

Herc nods.

“We’ll do our best.”

He takes two steps back, waits for Bruce to follow, then palms the controls for the airlock. The sets of double doors slide closed, and with a whir and a distant thud the docking tube from the _Thermopylae_ disengages from the _Sydney_ ’s outer hull. It retracts back to the _Thermopylae_ , carrying two thirds of Herc’s life with it.

He has to agree with Chuck: he doesn't like this either. But Raleigh is from Kaidan’s spec ops team, Yancy is an infiltration expert, Chuck is an espionage and hacking genius, and none of them are as useful in close, cramped quarters as Trevin and Raleigh together. Bruce is good, true, but Herc’s going to need him in engineering more than Scott and Kaidan’s strike force is going to need his biotics. And himself? He's just a soldier. The marines they'd already sent over to the _Thermopylae_ would each be about as useful as him on a mission like this, if not more so after their sim sessions with Scott earlier.

His comm crackles to life with an incoming transmission.

“I know it's hard to watch them go when you're being forced to stay behind.” Kaidan’s words are kind, knowing. “I'll take good care of them, Herc. I'll bring them back to you or die trying. I promise.”

Something tightens in Herc’s belly, and he has to cut the connection before he says or does something he'll regret. Something sentimental, like begging. If any of the others heard, or even get wind of how Herc’s bones physically _ache_ knowing they'd be in the line of fire, that he'd be unable to protect them. If any of them do much as suspect, it could distract them. And distractions are the best way for them to get themselves killed on a mission like this.

Instead, once he's sure the connection is completely cut, Herc grabs Bruce by the arm. Uses his omnitool to signal the airlock doors to seal them in again. Does a brief sweep to make sure none of the monitoring devices are enabled while Bruce cocks an eyebrow at him.

Then and _only_ then does he allow himself to wrap his arms around Bruce and...let go. Sag into the other man’s grip, his limbs shaking. For all that Bruce might be a jokester, Herc is grateful that in this, at least, they understand one another implicitly. Bruce just supports him, broad hands roaming his back as biotics-assisted strength holds him up. Tears don't quite fall, but his vision is certainly blurrier than it has any right to be.

Bruce holds him as Herc shakes. As he inhales and exhales in an unsteady rhythm. As his own hands fist at the back of Bruce’s uniform. As the traitorous thoughts— _what if we’re the only ones left, come tomorrow?_ —flit through the recesses of his mind and back into the darkness that spawned them. Bruce holds him until, after what feels like an eternity, Herc feels...empty. Like his capacity for near-panic has been used up for the day.

The shaking stops, and Herc barely has time to register Bruce backing up a half-step before he's leaning back in and there are warm lips on Herc’s. The kiss is not romantic, not full of desire or lust or heat. Instead, it feels like a promise born of passion, of a need to _be_ , to _continue_. Herc returns the kiss with all the force he can muster, and when Bruce pulls back, their eyes meet.

Not a single word passes between them the whole time.

They nod to one another, and methodically begin making sure their uniforms aren't out of place. That done, Herc’s finger hovers over the switch for the inner airlock doors.

“I love you,” he says. Short. Simple. Direct.

“I love you,” Bruce replies. Short. Simple. Direct.

Somehow, it feels right to have those words out there, standing on their own in the silence.

Herc hits the switch, and the inner doors slide apart with a near-imperceptible hiss of pneumatics and quaternary seals releasing. The elevator ride to the CIC is short, but the ride to engineering is even shorter. As the doors open, Bruce leans over to Herc and places a barely-there brush of lips against the stubble of Herc’s cheek. And then he's gone, elevator sealing behind him.

Herc runs over the plan in his mind one last time as the elevator whirs back to life. From here, it's less than a few dozen lightyears—only an hour or so at max FTL burn—to the Elysta system. Starting now, they'll be flying with stealth systems engaged. The _Sydney_ is too large to contain her entire energy signature at FTL, so the enemy will definitely know about them at least five or so minutes before their arrival—still, better than twenty to forty minutes’ warning. The _Thermopylae_ , with its far superior stealth technology and smaller energy profile, will hide in the shadow of their backscatter and wide-band translation burst when they slow to relative velocities, and sneak close to the station to deploy the infiltration team in the _Vessia_. That done, the _Thermopylae_ will attempt to get the jump on at least a few of the enemy ships to thin the pressure that will no doubt be raining down upon the _Sydney_. The infiltration team will locate Geiszler, bring him back to the shuttle, and leave an oversized warp warhead at the station’s command center somewhere along the way.

Oh, and they have to destroy a fleet of unknown size and composition.

The elevator slows, the deceleration barely perceptible, and Herc steps out into the CIC. Moves to his command console behind and to the side of Tendo’s pilot seat, and straps himself in as the biometrics verify his identity and bring up just over half a dozen displays at once. One of them, the external cameras, shows him a black emptiness filled with countless stars glowing sullenly in the distance.

“Lieutenant Choi,” Herc says, making his voice loud enough to carry over the background hum of other bridge personnel speaking into their comms or at their consoles, “AIDNN. Ship’s status.”

“Reactor output is holding steady,” Tendo reports, tone professional. “Fusion engines are on standby, maneuvering thrusters are primed, and Tantalus drive is ready to engage on your command.”

“All defensive systems report readiness,” AIDNN continues where Tendo stops. “Crew members have reported to maneuvering stations with the exception of engineering personnel attending to last-minute preparations. I have prepared a deceleration alarm for them once we are underway. Cyberwarfare suite is activated, comm relay is silenced for translation, and GARDIAN systems are on standby. All systems reporting ready.”

“Alright then,” Herc mutters, just loud enough that he knows Tendo will be able to hear him, “let’s get this done.”

Then, louder: “Begin our approach, Mr. Choi.”

Tendo taps something on his own controls, a telltale flashing green.

“Course laid in,” he confirms. Herc finds himself thinking that his pilot sounds equal parts nervous and excited beneath the professional calm. “Commencing jump to FTL in three, two…”

And, with barely more than a whisper and a gentle pull of acceleration, Herc’s external camera flashes with pinpricks of smudged light, the _Sydney_ hurtling them towards a fight that will probably kill every last one of them.


End file.
